Al-Shabaab Rebels Impose Forced Marriages, use Students as ‘Human Shields’

Map of Somalia

Summary

I was with al-Shabaab for three months in 2010…. They
wanted to train us to fight and I was afraid. I didn’t want to kill
people. I wanted to go back to school and learn.

—Amare A. (not his real name), 10-year-old boy from
Mogadishu, living in Kenya, June 2, 2011

Children in war-torn Somalia face horrific abuses, including
forced recruitment as soldiers, forced marriage and rape, and attacks on their
schools by the parties to the conflict. Those responsible are never held to
account.

Children, defined as anyone under age 18, have suffered
disproportionately from the ongoing conflict. Fighting between the Transitional
Federal Government (TFG), the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and
TFG-aligned militias on one hand and al-Shabaab, the Islamist armed group that
now controls much of the country, on the other, intensified in the capital,
Mogadishu, and other parts of south-central Somalia in mid-2010 and early 2011.
In October 2011 the conflict in the southern regions escalated further with the
incursion of Kenyan armed forces against al-Shabaab, followed shortly after by
the arrival of Ethiopian forces.

Children are often the main victims of the indiscriminate artillery
and small arms fire that has long characterized the fighting in Mogadishu. They
are also the most affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis, which is
underpinned by a UN-declared famine through the south-central region of Somalia
as well as the ongoing conflict between al Shabaab and the TFG.

This report documents al-Shabaab’s targeting of children
for recruitment as soldiers, forced marriage, and rape, with a focus on abuses
in 2010 and 2011. In addition, it documents how the group has targeted
students, teachers, and school buildings for attack. Al-Shabaab fighters have
also used schools as firing positions, and the students inside as “human
shields,” placing children at risk of injury or death from indiscriminate
or disproportionate return fire from TFG or AMISOM forces.

Children have served within TFG forces and TFG-aligned
militias, although Human Rights Watch has not been able to independently
confirm how widespread children’s participation is.

For this report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 164 newly arrived
Somali refugees in the Dadaab refugee camps and in Nairobi in May and June 2011.
Interviewees included more than 81 girls and boys who were under age 18 at the
time. Human Rights Watch also interviewed TFG officials, officials of United Nations
(UN) agencies and the African Union, members of nongovernmental organizations,
and members of the diplomatic community.

While the presence of children in fighting forces in the 21-year-long
Somali conflict is not a new phenomenon, there has been an unprecedented upsurge
of al-Shabaab forced recruitment of children since mid-2010; attacks on students,
teachers, and schools have also been prevalent in the last two years.

Although al-Shaabab has long relied on spreading extremist propaganda
and material rewards to coerce children to join, since mid-2010 it has
increasingly recruited children forcibly to replenish its dwindling ranks.

Children have nowhere to hide. Al-Shabaab has abducted them
wherever they congregate: schools, playgrounds, football fields, and homes. Schools
in particular have been attractive targets—14 of the 21 child escapees
from al-Shabaab whom Human Rights Watch interviewed were taken from schools or
on their way to school.

Life for children in al-Shabaab training camps is harsh: boys
undergo grueling physical combat training, weapons training, and religious and
political teaching during which some describe being forced to watch videos of
suicide bombings. Boys also described witnessing brutal physical punishments
and executions of those accused of spying for the TFG, and those attempting to
escape or merely failing to obey orders.

Al-Shabaab militants send children to the front lines, often
with little training. Several witnesses spoke of children serving effectively as
“human shields” for more experienced fighters during some of the
most intense fighting in Mogadishu. Others, including children too young to
carry military weapons, were aggressively coerced and threatened into serving
as suicide bombers. Besides participating in active combat, al-Shabaab uses children
in a multitude of support roles, including carrying ammunition, water, milk,
and food to the front lines; removing the wounded and killed; and working as
spies, guards, and porters.

Abducted girls are assigned cooking, cleaning, and other
domestic duties in the camps. Al-Shabaab uses girls and young women not only for
support for combat operations, but also for rape and forced marriage to
fighters.

Children, their families, and their teachers who try to
prevent recruitment and abduction or who attempt to escape face severe
consequences. Al-Shabaab has killed or injured parents who intervened to
protect their children although, on occasion, parents and community leaders
have successfully negotiated the release of abducted children with local
al-Shabaab leaders.

When children “defect” or escape from al-Shabaab
into the hands of the TFG or AMISOM, or are captured on the battlefield, they
face interrogation by the TFG security services, detention, and an uncertain
future instead of being protected as children.

While the available information suggests that the TFG itself
does not forcibly recruit children, children have found their way into its
ranks, often by volunteering for TFG forces or those of aligned militias,
manning checkpoints, and taking part in combat.

The TFG has to date failed to ensure that stringent and
systematic age screening procedures and standards are in place to screen all
its recruits and forces. Recruits who have not attended a training funded by
the European Union (EU) in Uganda and have been directly recruited from
militias are particularly likely to escape screening. Human Rights Watch is not
aware of any member of the TFG forces being held to account for the recruitment
and use of children.

Schools have featured heavily in al-Shabaab’s combat operations
as well as its efforts to control Somalis’ everyday lives. Many Somali
children are no longer in or have never been to school. Somalia has one of the
lowest rates of enrollment in the world; however, children and young people who
have persisted in attending school have found themselves, their teachers, and
their school buildings intentionally targeted for attack by al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab forces have turned
schools into battlegrounds, firing at TFG and AMISOM forces from functioning school
buildings and compounds, deliberately placing students and teachers in
harm’s way from often indiscriminate return fire by TFG and AMISOM forces.
Al-Shabaab has in some cases bombed school buildings, killing students,
teachers, and bystanders. The group has used schools to recruit students as
fighters and to abduct girls and young women for rape and forced marriage.

Al-Shabaab has imposed their harsh
interpretation of Islam on schools in areas that they control, prohibiting
English, the sciences, and other subjects deemed improper, and enforcing severe
restrictions on girls’ dress and interactions with male students. They
have threatened and even killed teachers who resist their methods, lectured
students on jihad and war as a recruitment tool, and placed their own teachers
in schools. Lessons have been left devoid of substance, teachers have fled,
and, where schools have not shut down entirely, children, deprived of any
meaningful education and afraid for their safety, have dropped out in large
numbers. Girls have dropped out disproportionately.

There remains no accountability in Somalia for violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law. The TFG and AMISOM have not
taken action against commanders responsible for laws-of-war violations or the
conscription of children. Al-Shabaab has to date been impervious to all calls
to end human rights abuses. Governments supporting the TFG and AMISOM have
largely failed to recognize that al-Shabaab atrocities are counterproductive
and no excuse for abuses by the Somali government.

The TFG initially denied the presence of children within its
forces but has more recently publicly acknowledged the need for action to be
taken to end their presence and use. In November 2011 the TFG reiterated a
commitment to enter into a formal UN action plan to end its use of child
soldiers. To date this commitment has not translated into necessary changes and
concrete measures on the ground, notably ensuring stringent and systematic
screening of all TFG recruits to prevent child recruitment and holding
accountable those responsible for the recruitment and use of children in its
forces. For the planned integration of militia groups into the TFG forces,
effective vetting measures are essential.

The TFG has come under too little pressure to improve its
record on children’s rights, or human rights more generally, by key
international actors who, by offering political and financial support to
Somalia, are in a position to demandprogress.
These include the UN, the United States (US), and the EU. The
“Roadmap” signed in September 2011 under the auspices of the UN Political
Office for Somalia (UNPOS), which is seen by international partners of the TFG
as the main instrument through which to hold the TFG to account, vaguely refers
to ending recruitment of children but fails to include clear benchmarks that
would enable monitoring compliance. While the UN and US have recently called on
the TFG to end the use and recruitment of children, to date they have not sought
to condition support to TFG forces on this basis.

There is no easy solution to the dire reality facing Somali
children, many of whom have known nothing but war. But parties to the conflict and
other key actors involved in Somalia should begin to prioritize the issue of
children’s rights, child protection, and education on the political and
security agenda. The risks of continuing to fail to protect and provide safe
and accessible education to Somalia’s children will result in yet another
generation lost to conflict, with few options for the future.

Human Rights Watch urges all warring parties in Somalia to
immediately end violations of the laws of war, in particular indiscriminate
attacks against civilians. On children specifically, we call upon al-Shabaab, the
TFG, and TFG-aligned militias to end the recruitment and use of children within
their ranks. Al-Shabaab should publicly order its commanders to end the
recruitment and use of children, and immediately hand over children within its
forces to a civilian protection body, cooperating with the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and child protection actors to ensure their safe
release. It should also immediately end targeted attacks on students, teachers,
and schools.

The TFG with international assistance should immediately
ensure that stringent and systematic age screening procedures and standards are
put in place for all its recruits. It should also hold to account those
responsible for violations of child’s rights, including the recruitment
and use of children and unlawful attacks on schools. It should also ensure that
captured children alleged to have been formerly associated with al-Shabaab are promptly
transferred to civilian rehabilitation and reintegration programs. Children
should not be detained solely for their association with armed opposition
groups.

International partners of the TFG should press the TFG to
fulfill its commitments to develop and implement a national action plan to end
the recruitment and use of children during the remaining transitional period.
And they should impose concrete consequences on the TFG for failing to do so. The
TFG’s partners, notably the US, should also ensure that the TFG meets
international standards regarding the treatment of children formerly associated
with al-Shabaab.

Monitoring and reporting on human rights violations, notably
violations of children’s rights, should be reinforced. To this end, donors
should politically support and fund the Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR) to reinforce its capacity to carry out its human rights
monitoring and reporting mandate on Somalia and appoint a child rights expert
within the OHCHR Somalia structure. The UN Security Council should enhance the
capacity of the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea to enable it to
fulfill its extended human rights mandate.

AMISOM and the TFG should, where feasible, map key civilian
infrastructure, including schools, and use this map to identify and protect schools
in areas of AMISOM and TFG military operations.

International support for child protection activities, including
the provision of medical and psycho-social support for survivors of sexual
violence, education, and vocational training activities should be significantly
increased both inside Somalia and in refugee receiving countries, namely Kenya
and Ethiopia.

Finally, addressing the human rights crisis that underpins
the conflict in Somalia also means tackling longstanding impunity. The TFG and
its international partners should call for the establishment of a UN Commission
of Inquiry—or a comparable, appropriate mechanism—by the UN to
document serious international crimes committed in Somalia and recommend
measures to improve accountability.

Key Recommendations

To the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia,
and Transitional
Federal Institutions

End all recruitment and use of children under age 18 by
TFG forces and aligned militias by developing and adopting a national
action plan that establishes rigorous and systematic screening procedures,
and by holding to account anyone found to be conscripting or using
children, consistent with widely accepted international standards.

Develop procedures to transfer captured children promptly
to civilian rehabilitation and reintegration programs. Children should not
be detained solely for their association with armed forces and groups.

Map key civilian infrastructure, including schools, with
the assistance of relevant agencies including the Education Cluster. Use
this map to identify and protect schools in areas of TFG military
operations.

Ensure that all credible allegations of violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law by TFG forces and aligned
armed groups are promptly, impartially, and transparently investigated,
and that those responsible for serious abuses, regardless of rank, are held
to account.

To al-Shabaab

Immediately cease recruitment of children under 18 years
old and release all children currently in al-Shabaab forces who are under
18.

Immediately end the
abduction of girls and women, and release all girls and women abducted for
forced marriage or other purposes.

Ensure that schools are
identified and protected and that students, teachers, and school
administrators are able to safely leave school buildings during military
operations where they may be at risk.

To Foreign Parties to the Conflict: AMISOM and the
African Union, Kenya, and Ethiopia

Map out key civilian infrastructure, including schools,
with the assistance of relevant agencies, including the Education Cluster,
in order to ensure that schools in areas of military operations are
identified and protected.

To All States and the Donor Community in Somalia

Provide the TFG with the necessary support and capacity to
systematically and effectively screen all its recruits by age in order to
prevent the recruitment and use of children within its forces.

Ensure that trainings provided to the TFG forces and personnel
include appropriate training in international humanitarian law, including
the protection of civilians and civilian objects and protection of
children’s rights.

Support and fund an
increase in the capacity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR) to monitor rights violations.

To the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights
Council

Intensify pressure on the TFG to immediately adopt and
promptly implement a time-bound UN action plan to end the recruitment and
use of children, one that includes screening procedures to ensure that
children are not recruited into the TFG or included in aligned militias
that are integrated into the TFG armed forces.

To the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) and Other Child Protection Agencies in Somalia and Kenya

Greatly expand demobilization, rehabilitation, and
reintegration programs for children formerly associated with fighting
forces and children recruited for forced marriage.

Methodology

This report documents violations of international human
rights and humanitarian law affecting children by all parties to the conflict
in south-central Somalia in 2010 and 2011. Violations include the recruitment
and use of children by the parties to the conflict, rape and forced marriage of
children, and attacks on education, namely the targeting of students, teachers,
and schools. While children are among the most vulnerable
groups of conflict-affected populations, for both protection and health reasons,
throughout 2010 and 2011 increasing anecdotal reports that children were being
specifically targeted began to emerge from those fleeing the fighting in
Somalia.

This report is based in large part on interviews with Somali
refugees in Kenya. In May and June 2011, three Human Rights Watch researchers
interviewed more than 164 Somali refugees in the Dadaab refugee camps and in
Nairobi. Interviewees included more than 81 boys and girls and who were under
age 18 at the time. We also interviewed young adults who had experienced abuses
in 2010 and 2011 while under age 18 or who had recently studied in primary and
secondary classes as over-age students and had information about abuses against
children in schools during this period, as well as parents of child victims,
and teachers. Many of those interviewed arrived in Kenya from Somalia’s
capital, Mogadishu, in mid-2010 or later when fighting became particularly
intense. Two Human Rights Watch researchers previously interviewed 82 Somali
refugees—men, women, and children—in November 2010 following
al-Shabaab’s “Ramadan offensive” of 2010.

Relying primarily on the accounts of individuals who were able
to flee Somalia made it easier for them to speak more freely but also skewed
the reporting towards people of certain backgrounds and from certain geographic
areas. For example, despite secondary reports of significant recruitment of
children by al-Shabaab in the Bay and Bakool areas, many of the children
interviewed were from Mogadishu and had more often than not been able to draw
on some sort of family or clan support in Mogadishu to assist their flight.

Human Rights Watch also carried out interviews between
August 2011 and January 2012 documenting abuses against IDPs in Mogadishu.

For security reasons, Human Rights Watch was not able to
visit any of the camps and detention facilities in Mogadishu where the TFG has
been holding children formerly associated with its own forces or with
al-Shabaab.

Refugees and
asylum seekers identified as recent arrivals to Kenya participated in
voluntary, open-ended interviews. Interviewees
were asked to relate events that they personally experienced or witnessed. Interviews with refugees were conducted
in Somali with the assistance of interpreters. All of the interviews were
conducted on a one-on-one basis, unless otherwise indicated in the footnotes. The names of interviewees and all victims of abuses have
been changed and the exact location of interviews omitted for security reasons.
Many requested anonymity, indicating their deep and persistent fear of
al-Shabaab and others, even within Kenya. Other identifying details of the interviewees
have, in some cases, also been withheld to preserve anonymity. Given the lack
of birth registration in Somalia and the fact children and young adults are not
always aware of their age, Human Rights Watch researchers asked a range of
questions to seek to confirm the age of the interviewees and asked parents when
they were available.

Human Rights Watch also spoke in person and by phone with TFG
officials; officials of UN agencies and the African Union; members of Somali
and international nongovernmental organizations working on human rights, child
protection, and education; and members of the diplomatic community. These
interviews were conducted through December 2011, in order to ensure the most
up-to-date information prior to publication.

In this report “child” and
“children” are used to refer to anyone under the age of 18,
consistent with usage under international law.

I. Background

Civilians, including children, have borne the brunt of the
ongoing civil armed conflict in Somalia. Children have suffered both from the
conflict generally and because they have been specifically targeted for
recruitment, rape, forced marriage, and other grave violations of international
law by the parties to the conflict. In addition, Somalia currently faces one of
the world’s worst humanitarian crises as a result of ongoing fighting,
drought, and the blocking of humanitarian assistance by al-Shabaab forces. From
July 2011 to February 2012, famine was declared by the UN in six regions of
south-central Somalia, a number later reduced to three. As statistics
demonstrate, children are most affected by famine.

Brief Summary of Somalia’s Conflict

The current armed conflict in Somalia began with the fall of
the Siad Barre regime in 1991 and intensified following the overthrow of the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which was an alliance of sharia courts that aligned
itself to rival the administration of Somalia’s Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) in December 2006. The ICU gained control of Mogadishu and
other parts of south-central Somalia in mid-2006 and brought a temporary
semblance of stability to Mogadishu but was seen as a security threat by
Ethiopia, which subsequently intervened militarily, driving out the ICU in late
2008.[1]

For two years following the Ethiopian intervention in
December 2006, Ethiopia and the weak TFG of Somalia (set up in 2004)[2]
were involved in intense fighting against Islamist armed groups, including
al-Shabaab.[3] The
fighting focused on Mogadishu, where Ethiopian forces with TFG support were
responsible for frequent indiscriminate artillery attacks causing high civilian
casualties in violation of the laws of war. These forces and Islamist armed
groups were also responsible for unnecessarily placing civilians at risk,
unlawful killings, rape, torture, and looting.[4] None of
the warring parties made any effort to hold those responsible for war crimes to
account. Nor did the international backers of the TFG and Ethiopian forces,
namely the US, the UN, and the EU, acknowledge the level of abuses or take
action to end them.

In January 2009 the Ethiopian armed forces withdrew
following the UN-led Djibouti peace agreement.[5] This
agreement also yielded a new and expanded Somali administration and led to the
election of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the former head of the ICU, as the new TFG
president.

Many ordinary Somalis were optimistic that the conflict and
massive rights abuses that had become part of their daily lives would end with
the Ethiopian withdrawal. However, within months they once again faced open
warfare, this time between the TFG, now backed by the African Union Mission in
Somalia (AMISOM), and Islamist armed groups, including the increasingly
powerful al-Shabaab. This fighting was once again characterized by
indiscriminate attacks and abuses committed with complete impunity. While
mandated by the UN Security Council to protect TFG institutions, AMISOM
increasingly became seen as a party to the conflict, as they began to actively
engage in running battles with al-Shabaab fighters.

Fighting intensified in May 2010 with laws-of-war violations being committed by all warring parties.[6] During the Islamic
holy month of Ramadan in August and September 2010, al-Shabaab called for a
final offensive to topple the TFG, and fighting escalated. In response, in September
the TFG launched an offensive, with AMISOM’s support, to reclaim areas of
Mogadishu under al-Shabaab control. Serious violations of the laws of war were
committed by both sides during these offensives, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas and
infrastructure with rocket and mortar fire that resulted in high civilian
casualties and the displacement of tens of thousands of people.[7]

Between February and April 2011 the TFG, again supported by
AMISOM, launched a series of offensives in Mogadishu and further afield against
al-Shabaab forces,[8] capturing several parts of the capital. The TFG and
pro-TFG militias, including Ahlu Sunna
Wal Jama’a (ASWJ) and Raskamboni, primarily supported by Ethiopia and
Kenya respectively, also gained control of small areas in the Gedo and Lower
Juba region, along Somalia’s Kenyan and Ethiopian borders.

In August 2011 the TFG and AMISOM launched a new offensive
against al-Shabaab in Mogadishu, reportedly to preempt another possible Ramadan
offensive. On August 6, al-Shaabab declared that it was pulling out its forces
from Mogadishu. On October 16, Kenyan military forces entered border
areas in Somalia and indiscriminately bombed several towns in which al-Shabaab
forces were allegedly deployed. Despite its withdrawal from Mogadishu, at the time of writing, al-Shabaab continues to control
more of southern Somalia’s territory than any other faction and retains
the ability to carry out attacks in Mogadishu.

The ability of the TFG to
stabilize zones that have come under the government’s control has been
hampered by the longstanding political crisis between President Sheikh Sharif
and the speaker of the parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, who has
presidential ambitions.

In June 2011 the TFG extended
its mandate and the transitional period, scheduled to end in August 2011, for
another year. The “Kampala Accord,” signed on June 9, 2011, by President
Sheikh Sharif and Speaker Sharif Hassan, called for the resignation of the
popular prime minister, Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed, and postponed elections to
2012. It also called for the development of a “roadmap” with clear
benchmarks to guide the implementation of priority transitional tasks: the
constitution, a security and stabilization plan, and reconciliation and
anti-corruption efforts.

Major Parties to the Conflict

The following is an overview of the major parties to the
armed conflict in Somalia as of late 2011.[9]

Transitional Federal Government (TFG)

Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG),
set-up in 2004, is recognized by the UN and almost all key foreign governments
(with the notable exception of Eritrea) as the legitimate government of
Somalia. Until 2011, it controlled only a small section of southern Mogadishu,
but extended its control over several areas of the city in the course of 2011.
The embattled TFG depends on the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for
its survival and security, and on donor funds. It has proved unable to assert
political control, build key government sectors, or provide the essential
services that would build its credibility. Infighting
between different factions and components of the Transitional Federal
Institutions (TFIs), of which the TFG is a component, has significantly
hampered political developments.

Al-Shabaab

Al-Shabaab is a militant
Islamist group that began as part of the armed wing of the Islamic Courts Union
(ICU) when the courts rose to power in Mogadishu in 2006. Al-Shabaab is not a monolithic entity but rather an
alliance of factions that initially rallied under its banner with the aim of
forcing the Ethiopian troops to leave Somalia. These groups retain a limited
common agenda of defeating AMISOM and the TFG and extending its extreme
interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law) across Somalia. Al-Shabaab currently controls more territory in southern
Somalia than any other faction and became the largest armed insurgent group in
December 2010 following its merger with Hizbul Islam, another Islamist armed group
led by former ICU member Hassan Dahir Aweys. Al-Shabaab withdrew from Mogadishu
in August 2011 but continues to carry out attacks in the war-torn capital.

Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a

Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a
(ASWJ) is a moderate Sufi Islamist group that has on paper been officially
affiliated with the TFG since March 2010. The
group exists primarily in central Somalia, where it has managed to maintain
control over large swathes of territory, predominantly in Galgadud and Hiraan
regions of central Somalia. It has more recently captured small areas of
territory in the Gedo region along the Ethiopian border from al-Shabaab. It receives financial and military support from Ethiopia.

African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)

Initially deployed to Mogadishu in 2007, AMISOM is mandated
by the African Union Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council to
provide protection to the Somali transitional institutions, including the TFG
and Parliament. However, since 2009, and especially since coming under attack
from al-Shabaab, it has increasingly taken part in the conflict.[10] AMISOM
has as yet not approached its authorized troop strength of 12,000; its current contingent
at least 10,000 Burundian, Ugandan, and more recently Djiboutian forces.[11]

Drought, Famine, and al-Shabaab’s
Restrictions on Humanitarian Access

Severe drought in
south-central Somalia worsened from October 2010 onwards. By August 2011, the
UN had declared six regions—primarily in southern Somalia—to be in
a state of famine. An estimated four million people, more than half of the
Somali population, were in crisis as of that month, around three million of whom
were in the south in predominantly al-Shabaab-controlled areas.[12] As of January 2012, according to the UN, four million
Somalis remain in need of humanitarian assistance.[13] The Somali population of internally displaced persons
and refugees—already one of the largest in the world—has further
escalated: one-quarter of Somalia’s estimated population of 7.5 million was
either internally displaced or lived outside the country as refugees as of December
2011.[14]

Aid agencies have been
limited not only by conflict and insecurity but also by al-Shabaab, which has restricted
some agencies’ work. The group has imposed a ban on over a dozen individual
agencies since 2009, placed significant financial and logistical burdens on
organizations that are working in areas under their control, and threatened and
attacked humanitarian workers. In early July 2011 al-Shabaab declared that it
was lifting the ban it had imposed on certain foreign aid agencies in areas
under its control as long as the distribution of aid was their only objective.[15] But the ban has yet to be lifted and by November
al-Shabaab had proclaimed a fresh ban on 16 aid organizations, including UN
agencies.[16] Al-Shabaab also continues to severely restrict the
freedom of movement of those seeking access to humanitarian assistance in areas
under its control.

Access to humanitarian
assistance in areas under TFG control has also been hampered by diversion and
looting of humanitarian aid.[17] Media reports in August 2011 suggested that food aid
diversion in Mogadishu was occurring on a large scale.[18]

Counterterrorism legislation,
and most notably the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions that
seek to prevent support reaching designated terrorist organizations, have also
negatively impacted humanitarian operations in Somalia, resulting both in a
significant decrease in US funding of humanitarian organizations since 2008 and
the imposition of burdensome measures on those receiving US support.[19]

Children in the Somali Conflict

Children continue to be killed or maimed as
a result of indiscriminate shelling, gunfire, widespread insecurity, and the
targeting of schools. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
reported that in 2010, 43 percent of patients admitted to the two main referral
hospitals in Mogadishu with war-related injuries were women and children.[20]

The
difficulties that humanitarian agencies face trying to access south-central
Somalia further aggravates the situation of children, who are particularly
vulnerable to food insecurity and disease. Severe acute malnutrition rates
among children doubled between March and July 2011.[21] By August the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition
was estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.[22] Half of the tens of thousands of individuals who have
died as a result of the famine are reported to be children.[23]

The destruction of livelihoods, traditional
protection structures, and separation or destruction of families as a result of
the length of the conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the number of civilian
casualties, and repeated displacement of a significant proportion of the
population has left children particularly vulnerable. The numbers of abandoned,
orphaned, or separated children and children living and working in the streets
has skyrocketed over the course of the last four years. While child labor has long
been a part of Somali culture, children are now often the sole source of income
to their families or siblings.

Children are also among the most vulnerable
groups of internally displaced persons and refugees for both protection and
health reasons. The number of unaccompanied minors and child-headed households
among the displaced person and refugee population has increased over the course
of the conflict, particularly since 2007.[24]

Children’s Access to Education in Somalia

Children’s right to education in Somalia is severely
restricted.[25]
According to UNICEF, Somalia has one of the lowest rates of school enrollment
in the world, with a net primary school enrollment rate of around 23 percent in
2010.[26] Disparity between levels of enrollment
between girls and boys even at the lower levels of primary school is alarming:
according to the latest available data, the gross primary enrollment ratio was
only 23 percent of girls, compared with 42 percent of boys.[27]
Enrollment in secondary schools is minimal: gross secondary enrollment was only
11 percent for boys and 5 percent for girls in the late 2000s.[28]
School dropout rates reportedly reached 50 percent following the Ramadan
offensive in 2010 and 38 percent in the first four months of 2011.[29]

There are only five government-run schools in all of
south-central Somalia, all located in Mogadishu. Other schools are financed
primarily by parents, communities, or private individuals either in Somalia or
in the diaspora, or by national or international donor and development
organizations. While the total number of schools in south-central Somalia is
unknown, agencies involved in the Education Cluster—the UNICEF- and Save
the Children-led entity that coordinates organizations and agencies working in
the education sector—funds 4,822 schools in these regions.[30]
Secondary schools are scarce and found mainly in Mogadishu.

While not clearly standardized, there are generally four
categories of schools in Somalia: primary and secondary schools employing Arabic,
Somali, or Kenyan curriculum, as well as non-formal duqsi (Quranic
schools). There is no unified national curriculum.

Despite the dire situation of the education system in
south-central Somalia, the sector remains inadequately funded. As of November
2011, of the US$29 million requested under the Consolidated Appeals Process
(CAP) for the education sector, only $18 million—62 percent—had
been funded, in large part via UNICEF funding.[31]
It is within this already terribly restricted environment that children are
struggling to go to school.

II. Recruitment and Use of Children as Soldiers

The recruitment and use of children in the Somali civil war
is not a new phenomenon: children have been used throughout the conflict by
clan and warlord militias for the defense of the home and the clan. However,
the level of recruitment and involvement of children in the conflict has
substantially increased since early 2007 when recruitment became more
widespread and targeted.[32]
All the current Somali parties to the conflict in Somalia—including the
TFG forces, al-Shabaab, Hizbul Islam, and Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a—have
recruited or used children for military service.

Human
Rights Watch interviews with Somalis who have fled Somalia since early 2010
indicate that forced recruitment and abductions have intensified in line with an
upsurge in fighting. A significant proportion of children interviewed said they
were forcibly taken from their schools, though many others recounted being
abducted from playgrounds, football (soccer) fields, markets, and homes,
primarily by al-Shabaab militants. Girls and boys have both been targeted, with
girls taken primarily for domestic duties and boys taken to be trained for
combat or other work on the front lines. The ever-present reality of forced
recruitment and abduction has caused children to leave school, often fleeing
the country with their families.

Children are afforded
multiple special protections under the international human rights and
humanitarian law framework.[33] All parties to
the conflict in Somalia have an obligation to afford special protection to
children and to ensure that children do not take part in hostilities.[34]

Human Rights Watch spoke with
19 boys and 4 girls who had been recruited by armed groups, and almost 50
parents, relatives, and others who were witnesses to child recruitment. With
one or two exceptions, all of the recruited boys and girls with whom Human
Rights Watch spoke said they had been recruited by al-Shabaab. Our research
also found that children continue to be associated with the TFG and TFG-aligned
militias, largely as a result of a lack of stringent age screening procedures.

Al-Shabaab

I tried to refuse but I couldn’t. I just had to go
with them [al-Shabaab]. If you refuse, maybe sometimes they come and kill you
or harm you, so I just went with them. One of my friends who was older than me,
they came and started with him the same as they did to me and he refused, and
they left him but another day they found him on the street and shot him.

—14-year-old boy, Kenya, May 29, 2011

Former child recruits and child and adult witnesses
described to Human Rights Watch how al-Shabaab forces took children to their
training camps throughout 2010 and 2011. Most of the children were
reportedly between ages 15 and 18 but some were as young as 10 years old. From
the camps they were sent to the front lines or forced to act as porters, spies,
and suicide bombers. Children have been injured, maimed, and killed.

Al-Shabaab’s recruitment of children has been widely
reported.[35] Forced
recruitment of children became common practice in 2009, but by April 2010
anecdotal reports indicated that child recruitment increased significantly and
has shown no signs of reducing. While exact numbers of children recruited by
al-Shabaab is unknown, in April 2011 a report from the UN secretary-general
cited military sources stating that al-Shabaab abducted an estimated 2,000
children for military training in 2010.[36]

Fourteen of the twenty-three children whom Human Rights
Watch interviewed who were recruited said that al-Shabaab recruited them from
school or while they were traveling to and from school. The other children
recruited by al-Shabaab said that al-Shabaab took them from parks and playing
fields, or even in their own homes. For example, Galaal Y., a 14-year-old boy
from Hamar Weyne district in Mogadishu, described how in December 2010 two of
his primary school classmates lured him to a field to play football where he
was ultimately taken by al-Shabaab and forced to become a fighter:

Two of my classmates, who I later realized were working
with al-Shabaab, ages 16 and 18, had written our names down on a list to form a
football team. The next day we went along to a field to play, thinking that
another team would come along, but when we arrived at the field, al-Shabaab
arrived instead. They came in a vehicle and were wearing khamis and
headscarves.[37] They
were armed with AK-47’s [military assault rifles] and told us that
playing football was not helpful and they would turn us into jihadis [Islamic
fighters]. They took 16 of us between the ages of 10 and 16.[38]

Children said that al-Shabaab regularly uses children as
intelligence gatherers or intermediaries to identify other children of fighting
age, and then uses these children to pressure or force their peers to join
al-Shabaab. A 16-year-old boy from Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch how he was
approached and forced to join al-Shabaab in the mosque while attending evening
prayers:

I was a student and al-Shabaab forced me to fight against
the TFG…. They came to the mosque when we went for prayers. They pretend
they are an imam [preacher] and use Islamic teaching to try and make you
join. If you refuse to join they will kill you.

The guy who spoke to me had staff all around him. They were
merged into the crowd of the mosque. He spoke to me directly. They were
approaching everyone, even teenagers…. He used the words of the Quran and
said the government was not concerned with religion.

They tell you to join, and if not, the boys around him (the
ones in the crowd) who were 13 and 14 years old will come and kill you. They
had guns with them and a grenade attached to the side of their pants.[39]

Despite some territorial gains by TFG and AMSIOM forces in
late 2010 and early 2011 in Mogadishu, as of July 2011 al-Shabaab still
controlled eight of the sixteen districts of the capital.[40]
In al-Shabaab-controlled areas, there was virtually nowhere that children could
be assured of their safety. While families sought shelter in their homes during
periods of intense fighting between al-Shabaab and AMISOM forces, homes offered
no protection from the ongoing forced recruitments by al-Shabaab.[41]
Children told Human Rights Watch how al-Shabaab approached homes where families
were known to have boys considered old enough to fight and demanded that
families hand them over to join their forces.

Several children told Human Rights Watch that they were
recruited by their own family members—fathers, brothers, and cousins—who
had joined al-Shabaab. A mother described how her husband took their
10-year-old son to battle:

My husband was in al-Shabaab. He came and said to my eldest
son [who was 10 years old], “You must also join.” He overpowered me
and took my son. Later I heard my son died in the war. I went to where my
husband was, Horera mosque, and I said, “I heard my son died.” He
said, “I am pleased to inform you that our son died a martyr. He went
straight to paradise.” He showed me footage he took of my son being
killed in the war. His blood. His body. I cried.[42]

While almost all of the 23 children interviewed by Human
Rights Watch were forcibly recruited, there were also reports of some children
who joined al-Shabaab “voluntarily,” particularly after intensive
campaigns of recruitment. The very notion of voluntariness of any child’s
decision, particularly in a context of extreme poverty, hunger, and
al-Shabaab’s well-known violence against those who refuse, to join an
armed group is questionable.[43]

Al-Shabaab has put various forms of pressure on children to
join their forces. Children spoke of multiple tactics to entice them to join,
including offering cash and mobile phones and forcing children to study
religious propaganda as part of their schooling. Baashi M. described how his
12-year-old brother joined al-Shabaab:

They gave him $100 and convinced him at school that if he
became a martyr he would go to paradise. They also bought him clothes. He never
told my parents he was going, he just disappeared. He wanted to be a driver and
al-Shabaab said they would send him to driving school.[44]

Other children were offered cash
incentives to recruit other children, as one 15-year-old witness recounted:

Many of my friends were given incentives—money to
enroll others. Depending on how many you enroll you would be given more or less
money. Many boys enrolled. If you refused to enroll you were forced to.[45]

A teacher explained how effective these incentives are:
“80 percent [of my students] are so poor. They have no money so when they
give them money they will join…. A whole generation—95
percent—they join the armed groups because of hunger. There is nowhere to
go, just to get a gun and fight. Daily they get money. If they don’t
join, they don’t get food.”[46]

Several children told Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab
brought their members into schools to teach subjects such as
“jihad,” where children were lectured on their duty to join the
jihad and promises of “entry into paradise” if a child died as a
martyr. The classes, which ranged from daily to weekly classes, were also used
as a way for al-Shabaab to gain entry into the school and recruit children.
Children described being lectured on the virtues of jihad, shown Islamist
propaganda videos, and given weapons demonstrations. Sometimes these methods
convinced girls and boys to join. One young woman said that about 15 of her 40
to 45 classmates—5 girls and 10 boys—decided to join after a jihad
class.[47] Other
children also described a mix of propaganda and force that led them and their
classmates to join. For example, Iskinder P., age 15, said he decided to join
both because he was “being forced” and “because the majority
of my teachers were al-Shabaab and they used to lecture us and tell us ‘Al-Shabaab
is good, let’s defend our country. These are foreigners who are fighting
our country.’”[48]

Baashi M., a 27-year-old student who was attending the Juba
Primary School in the southern port city of Kismayo, described how al-Shabaab
would come into the school and use the classes as a precursor to forcibly
taking students to fight:

Al-Shabaab used to come to my school often, sometimes they
would come two to three times a day. They came and picked up kids between 12
and 20 years old and would take them to a building in the school and play DVDs
of jihadis on the battlefield on a laptop. They would also preach about
religion. They took me there in February 2010.[49]

Similarly, an over-age student in primary school from Suuqa
Xoola, Mogadishu, said: “Initially they preached ideology, but when they
realized that they were not recruiting they decided to recruit forcefully. This
is what made me flee.”[50]

Retaliation against Children and Families Who Refuse

Al-Shabaab said to my elder brother,
“Come with us.” He refused and they beheaded him. He was 16. They
took him and put his head in front of our house.

Children repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that they felt
powerless to resist recruitment by al-Shabaab. Witnesses spoke of
“children who had refused recruitment having their hands cut off”
or in some instances beheaded.[51] Knowing
that refusal would mean being taken by force or possibly killed, children
recounted the fear they felt as al-Shabaab fighters entered their schools and
homes and the desperate measures they would take to escape detection. One
witness said that at his school, children would “stampede” and
“scramble out of windows,” jumping from second and third floor
windows and landing on top of each other in desperate bids to escape.[52]

Parents other family members regularly attempt to protect
both girls and boys from being recruited by al-Shabaab, according to witnesses.
Al-Shabaab has killed and injured relatives, and in some cases school teachers,
who get in their way. Human Rights Watch documented half a dozen such cases. In
two cases mothers said they personally intervened to prevent their children
from being recruited.[53]

One mother told Human Rights Watch how she tried to defend
her four youngest children from recruitment. After she pled and physically
tried to prevent the children from being taken, her husband, an al-Shabaab
member, shot her in the ankle.[54] In
another incident, in December 2009, al-Shabaab entered the Shabelle Primary
School in Mogadishu and forced parents to sign an agreement allowing their
children to join al-Shabaab. An eyewitness told Human Rights Watch:

Two fathers who refused to sign were threatened in the
meeting and told they would not survive this. They were shot a day later in the
Bakara market with letters pinned on their bodies saying this is what would
happen to any parent who refused to allow their children to join al-Shabaab.[55]

Abuses in Training Camps

Once recruited, children are typically taken to an
al-Shabaab training camp.[56] Almost
all of the children Human Rights Watch interviewed whom al-Shabaab had
recruited said that they had spent time in a training camp for durations
ranging from several weeks to three years before they escaped.[57]
In many instances they were unable to give the exact locations, often because
they were blindfolded on the way, but most said they were held somewhere around
the outskirts of Mogadishu. Others said they were held in and around former
government installations in al-Shabaab-controlled areas in the city,
surrounding Kismayo, and in and around the southern Shabelle regions.

Camps varied in their descriptions, ranging from physical
structures, including former government buildings, where children were detained
in cells with minimal food and poor sanitary conditions, to open, camp-like
settings with children sleeping on open ground. Omar A., 17, described the
training camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu where he was held for two months:

The place looked like the bush, and there were tents and
vehicles. There were many people there, maybe 300. There were adults and children
but we didn’t speak much to them. Al-Shabaab said, “You will work
with us, you will fight, and we will train you.” You can’t say you
don’t want to because they force you and they have weapons and if you
refuse they will kill you.[58]

A 17-year-old boy who was kept in one such facility told
Human Rights Watch:

There was no good food. Sometimes they
beat me. I couldn’t see anyone. Sometimes they threatened to slaughter
me. They tied my hands and legs. They threatened that if I identified their
place and they released me they will get me again and cut me to pieces.
Sometimes they took me outside the room and put cold water on my body…..
I was in the dark the whole time. I couldn’t see anyone, seated there, no
sleep, they come and tell you they’ll slaughter you.[59]

Girls were reportedly brought to some of the camps to clean,
cook, and serve food. They were also forced to marry fighters and raped (see
below).

The training camps prepared boys to fight. There were
consistent reports from inside the camps of children being trained for combat
as well as being given a variety of other domestic and logistical tasks.
Training, they said, lasted from one week to several months.[60]
At minimum, children told us that training included basic physical and light
weapons training with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols. The training followed a
regular routine. A 13-year-old boy from Mogadishu explained:

In the
morning they told us we were going for training. They told us to jump in holes,
climb over piles of trees. It was a hectic training and difficult for my age.
At times they told us to crawl or roll on the ground or crawl between metal
poles without touching them. It was difficult. We had to do push-ups, walk in a
funny style. It was so difficult. After two weeks training, they gave us
pistols and a card, made us mark it, put it at a distance, and told us to shoot
that mark.[61]

Children described harsh
physical conditions, including being forced to sleep in the open, given little
food to eat, and forced to undertake grueling physical training schedules to
prepare them for combat. If children refused, they said they received harsh
physical punishments. As one 14-year-old boy told us: “We trained
until 1 p.m. They made us to do sit-ups and walk on our knees. I was saying,
‘I am exhausted, I can’t do anymore,’ and they cut me with a
big knife. A big knife that you use to slaughter animals.”[62]
Another boy showed a four- to five-inch scar on his upper arm he said he had
gotten from being whipped, recounting: “On the first day I shot [an
AK-47] three or four times but they found me shaking. When they saw me
trembling they encouraged me and said, “You are doing this for religion
and you must carry it.”[63]

A majority of children interviewed by Human Rights Watch
also reported being given religious education that stressed the importance of
participating in the jihad. This sometimes included watching video footage of
jihadist groups fighting in other countries.[64] The
children also said they conducted regular prayer and religious practice.

Punishment and Executions

Anyone found escaping will be killed. Even at night when we
were sleeping and in the morning they would cane us. They wouldn’t tell
us why, they would just beat us.

Several children said they witnessed brutal physical
punishments and executions at the

camps, sometimes involving other children. The reasons for
execution varied from not obeying orders and attempting to escape to
accusations of being a TFG spy.

A 16-year-old boy described how he and other children were
forced to watch executions of “enemies of al-Shabaab”:

I was made to watch an execution of a group of people who
were considered to be al-Shabaab enemies, as they were accused of supporting
the TFG or rejecting al-Shabaab. About 20 people were killed that day. I did
not see any children being killed. It was the older recruits who were around 25
and up who were made to execute the people.[65]

In another example, an eyewitness said that he and his
classmates were taken to a camp from their Mogadishu primary school, and those
who refused to participate in training were executed in front of their peers:

Out of
the fifteen abducted, five died in training school. The five never agreed to
join al-Shabaab and hid. They [al-Shabaab] brought them and paraded them in
front of us and shot them. They were 10, 14, 15, 16, and 17 years old.[66]

Children also said they were forced to hand out violent
punishments to people found to be breaching al-Shabaab’s rules. Human
Rights Watch interviewed seven children who had been forced to take whips and
patrol the town looking for businesses that remained open during prayer time,
women wearing clothes al-Shabaab deemed inappropriate, or young people
listening to music on their telephones. A 15-year-old boy from Middle Juba
explained:

I was given two jobs, to whip women and to punish boys who
had music on their mobile phones. I would make them swallow the memory card. I
made 20 youth swallow the cards and I must have whipped 50 women. I would go
with older men backing me up. They were about 30 years old and there were five
of them. They would stand with me and force me. I felt bad to whip someone my
mother’s age. Other children were given similar jobs.[67]

Some children said they were sent to patrol towns under
al-Shabaab control and identify to catch adults and children who had escaped
from training camps. Iskinder, age 15, told us:

Some people escaped with vehicles and I had to catch them.
We would shoot the vehicles’ tires so they couldn’t move and take
them back. We used to identify the people who escaped. I didn’t want to
do it but we were forced many times. We were told to go and stand on the street
and identify escapees. We used to beat them and take them to jail. I had a cane
and a weapon.[68]

Fighting on the Battlefield

Children, mostly boys, said they were sent to the front
lines from the training camps, often with minimal training. There, witnesses
said, al-Shabaab uses children for a range of activities, from supplying
fighters to serving as “human shields” to protect more experienced
fighters.

Fighting between al-Shabaab and the TFG and AMISOM
intensified in August 2010, during what was referred to as the “Ramadan
Offensive 2010.”[69] During
this period and the months to follow, al-Shabaab was engaged in sustained
clashes with government forces and African Union (AU) troops in Mogadishu.

A witness told Human Rights Watch that children of all ages
could be seen on the front lines during these intense periods of fighting.[70]
Children too small to carry large firearms, such as AK-47s, were given pistols
and smaller weapons, as well as grenades to throw.[71]
A 21-year-old fighter described such a scene: “We would fight early in
the morning. I saw small kids, maybe 10 or 11 years old, with pistols, and
those who could carry got AK-47s, and a lot of kids between 10 and 18 years old
were given whips.”[72]

Before going into battle children were often lectured and
encouraged to fight to the death. Al-Shabaab continued to use the promise of
martyrdom, as was described to Human Rights Watch by 14-year-old Ali F.:

I participated in a fight. They told me that if I died
there, I was going to become a martyr. We were lectured for four to five hours
on religion and told not be cowards. There were about a hundred of us in the
camp and 20 of us were under 18. The youngest was between eight and ten years
old. The smaller ones were taught how to use a pistol and how to throw
grenades. They also used them as suicide bombers. They said, “If you
participate in suicide bombings you will become a martyr.” They said,
“A martyr is rewarded by going to paradise.”[73]

Omar A., 18, described what happened when he was sent to the
front lines at age 17:

In the camp there were some previous
trainees and they took them to fight in battle and only half came back…. They
told us, “You will go and fight for two days and then come back to the
camp”…. The place was just before [outside of] Mogadishu, just on
the outskirts. They gave us automatic weapons [AK-47s]. As we were driving in,
the fighting started. They dropped us and started to fight. We could not see
them. There were 15 of us and immediately 10 of us were shot. I dropped my gun
and I ran. The ones who were shot were 15, 18, and 19 years old. They were all
injured. Al-Shabaab leaves the wounded and they leave and they continue
fighting.[74]

Media
reports also describe children’s bodies being seen on the battlefields.[75]

A number of children explained to Human Rights Watch that
they were sent to the front lines with experienced al-Shabaab fighters behind
them using the children as a kind of “human shield.”[76]

Abdikarim K., 15, told Human Rights Watch:

Then they took us to fight. It was
between al-Shabaab and the TFG. The fighting started at about 5 a.m. All the
young children were taken to the first row of the fighting. I was there. We
were defeated. Several of the young children there were killed, including
several of my classmates. Out of all my classmates—about 100 boys—only
two of us escaped, the rest were killed. Other children were also there on the
front lines, about 300. The children were cleaned off. The children all died
and the bigger soldiers ran away.[77]

Another 15-year-old boy, Iskinder P., said:

When the two months of training were over, there was a
fight between al-Shabaab and the Marehan Clan. Al-Shabaab said it needed 300
fighters and I was among them. We were on the front lines. The heads always
stayed behind us. Sometimes when I was firing the gun I would avoid shooting
people and the person behind me would hit me.

I have seen someone shot in the head. His brain went all
over. I was really shocked, mentally upset. They saw me turning my gun off and
on, very upset. Someone said, “This boy is not normal,” and helped
me into a vehicle. They took the gun from me. I was shocked and crying.[78]

Besides actually fighting, children, including girls, are
also used to serve in a multitude of support roles during combat, including
carrying bullets, water, milk, and food to the front lines, and bodies and
wounded fighters from the battlefield.[79] Some of
these activities, such as carrying ammunition during battle, would be
considered direct participation in hostilities under international humanitarian
law, making them liable to attack.[80]

A 14-year-old boy described his experience:

You go in a “technical” [a civilian vehicle
mounted with anti-aircraft gun] when they take you to war. We were just helping
to carry bullets. They show you your partner who carries the weapon and you go
with him. We were trained how to carry bullets, how to be on the front lines.
You stay with them; you sleep with them … up to five days, but usually
two days. I used to see wounds and even I had seen someone shot. Sometimes boys
were wounded and killed.

Sometimes when they pulled back we would run and give them
water. When the fighting would start we would run back and we would pull the wounded
and dead bodies to the vehicle. We used to carry and wash the bodies and help
bury them.[81]

Ridwan R., 10, also said he supported fighters on the
battlefield:

Strong children were asked to carry injured fighters. I
went with them.… Sometimes I was collecting the wounded, sometimes
serving food…. I saw some 7-year-olds. When I talked to them they told me
they were used as a shield. They had bullet wounds and metal in their body.[82]

Suicide Bombers

The youngest [in the camp] was between eight and ten years
old. The smaller ones were taught how to use pistols and how to throw grenades.
Al-Shabaab also used them as suicide bombers. I saw these kids hurling
grenades. I heard them talking about suicide bombings. They said, “If you
participate in suicide bombings you will become a martyr.” We were told
not to discuss this issue with adults as they would discourage us. The ones who
talked to us about it had their faces covered. They said, “A martyr is
rewarded by going to paradise.”

In addition to using children in its more conventional
combat operations, al-Shabaab has also used children as suicide bombers.
Al-Shabaab’s use of suicide bombers to target TFG ministers and
installations as well as AU peacekeepers has been documented in various media
reports.[83] Human
Rights Watch interviewed one young man who was used in an attempted suicide
bombing near an AMISOM base in February 2011 when he was 17 years old, and a
teacher who witnessed the killing of eight students when an eleven-year-old
suicide bomber disguised as a food vendor detonated explosives on the school
grounds in October 2009.[84]

Al-Shabaab seeks out children
for use in suicide missions in training camps, and in primary schools. Four
children told Human Rights Watch that they saw other children, being prepared
and sometimes taken from the training camps to become suicide bombers.[85]
This fear of being forced to carry out suicide bombings drove some to make
dangerous and often life-threatening attempts to escape. The consequences for
failing to carry out a suicide bombing or trying to escape, however, were
grave.

Feysal M., who was 12 when al-Shabaab took him with his
classmates from school in early 2011, said that al-Shabaab executed some of the
boys because they refused to become suicide bombers: “Some of the boys
had parents in the TFG so al-Shabaab wanted to use them as suicide bombers. So
they gave them a choice to be killed or explode themselves. So they said,
‘Either way we die so just kill us so we don’t kill
others.’” Feysal said he was with the boys when al-Shabaab gave
them the choice: “I saw them with their hands bound, taken to the
bush.” He said he was ordered to watch the execution but he refused:
“One was my close cousin…. I didn’t want to see my cousin and
my friends butchered. So they started whipping me with a shamut [whip].
Later I was forced to see the bodies. I ran out of words I was so shocked and
terrified…. When I remember it, it’s hell.”[86]

The Story of an Escaped Child
Suicide Bomber

In February 2011, I was in Dhobley [near the Kenyan
Border]. I was recruited by al-Shabaab and taken back to Medina. The job I
was given was a suicide bomber or to place bombs. There were eight of us
selected for suicide bombings. I was so scared. I knew I was going to take my
life. The eight of us were divided into four groups of two. Each day two
would go and bomb. The others were between 18 and 20 years old. They trained
us how to drive and gave other training for 10 days. The trainer was
Pakistani, but his face was covered.

The first group of two was taken to the livestock market,
to a TFG office, and six remained. Next were me and Ali [not his real name],
who was 19 years old. We were sent to a place called Kilometer 4 near the
AMISOM base. We were given a Toyota Prado [automobile]. There were other
vehicles sent to follow us to see that we did the job. We parked and decided
to disappear and flee. We didn’t know al-Shabaab were following us. We
were meant to take a specific route but we turned off on a side road. Then
there were four vehicles which barricaded us in. They asked why we turned off
and then started to beat us with the butt of their guns. There were six
al-Shabaab beating us.

We were arrested by al-Shabaab and taken to a cell in
Medina, Bulaqaraa. It was where the top officials were who would decide our
fate. It is the place that in 2008 AMISOM was hosted. They had discussions
for four or five days. On the sixth day an official said that we had betrayed
al-Shabaab and that we were TFG spies and that we should be killed. We were
told that tomorrow at 8 a.m. we would be taken from our cell and would face
the knife. We were given cell phones to call our parents and say that we will
be killed the following day.

My partner’s father was with the TFG, but he was
not from Medina, but I knew everyone in Medina. My colleague was given a
phone and called his father and explained. It was a short conversation. He
handed the phone to me and I didn’t know who to call … my mother,
father, or brother. My mother was in Medina at the time, so I phoned my
brother. Al-Shabaab arrested him twice. My brother went to the clan elders.
The elders came and pleaded with al-Shabaab to release us but they refused.

It was on the second day of talks that a guy said we had
four hours left and then we would be taken to the killing area. We pleaded
and explained we had not done anything. This man showed us the way out. I
listened to his instructions and the other boy didn’t believe it was
true—he thought it was a trap. For me it was do or die, so I tried to
escape. My friend stayed behind. I thought the worst case was we will both be
dead … but best case, I escape. I followed the escape route. I was
lucky.

—Tahlil D. (not his real name), Kenya, June 2, 2011

Role of Girls

Al-Shabaab has frequently taken girls for cooking, cleaning,
and other support roles, as well as for rape and forced marriage. Girls and
other eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab has targeted girls
on the street, at schools, and en route to school, and taken them directly from
their homes. This section addresses al-Shabaab’s use of girls to provide
support for the fighters. Rape and forced marriage are discussed in a later
section.

As described in interviews, the girls and young women
targeted ranged in age from around 11 to the early 20s.[87]
Girls were often abducted in the same sweeps as boys. A 10-year-old boy from
Mogadishu taken by al-Shabaab in late 2010 described how he was abducted along
with a group of schoolmates that included girls, en route from school:

We were coming from school with our friends. Al-Shabaab
pulled up and dragged us to their vehicle. They had covered heads and faces but
they weren’t in uniform. Many children were taken, even girls. They said,
“The girls will cook for us, the small boys we’ll send to the
markets and the bigger boys will fight.” They took us to a place that
looked like the bush. They took the girls to a different place and we
didn’t see them after that.”[88]

Similarly, girls are taken from school. A 15-year-old boy
from Al Abadir primary school in Mogadishu recounted one incident during
Ramadan 2010: “They [al-Shabaab] moved from class to class and took
students aged 14, 16, 18, both boys and girls. They took eight girls and
fifteen boys. The girls were to cook and carry water to fighters.”[89]

Human Rights Watch interviewed five girls between the ages
of 11 and 22 who described the differing roles girls were forced to play in the
training camps. These included “being made to clean, cook, and wash their
[al-Shabaab’s] clothes.”[90]

Boys and men who had been in training camps said that they
regularly saw girls brought to the camps. A 10-year-old boy held at a training
camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu described girls in the camp cooking and
serving food to fighters.[91]
Similarly, a 20-year-old student recalled an incident in which he witnessed the
arrival of a group of girls into the training camp where he was being he held.
He said, “There were six girls. They had been taken from houses. They
were locked in different rooms and we could hear them crying.”[92]

The girls we interviewed also described being kept locked in
rooms or houses and only allowed out to work. While the girls we interviewed
who were taken for domestic duties said they were not sexually assaulted at the
camps, Human Rights Watch received several reports of violence against girls
during their detention. As Farax K., 17, told Human Rights Watch:

We would wash their clothes and cook for them. They were
not harassing us sexually, but they were beating us. They gave us only one set
of clothes and it was very heavy. We used to cook and sometimes the girls would
shed tears remembering their freedom. That’s when they would beat us with
guns. One day they hit me so hard I fell on the ground.[93]

Girls who were taken to perform domestic duties often said
they were kept for shorter periods of time than children recruited for combat
training. The girls we interviewed told Human Rights Watch that they were taken
for periods ranging from two days to two weeks, and then were released or
escaped.[94]

Aamina M., 13, told Human Rights Watch how she and her
friends escaped in 2010 after being held for three days by al-Shabaab:

Al-Shabaab went to eat and the girls forced the lock [on
the door]. We pushed and pushed and then when it opened we ran away. When we
ran, they saw us and opened fire. Four girls were caught by al-Shabaab and
another 10 who had been fired upon, we think they got shot. One girl out of the
four of us who [successfully] escaped knew the route well and she got us to Medina.[95]

Fear of Re-Recruitment

If children manage to escape from al-Shabaab forces, they
remain at risk. Children told us they feared re-recruitment and would hide in
remote areas or other towns waiting to flee to Kenya.[96]
Other children who escaped from al-Shabaab
and managed to return home said they were too fearful to go outside. As
16-year-old Maahir D. explained after his escape from a training camp: “I
was scared to be recaptured as the trainers in the camp told us we would be
killed if we tried to escape…. I stayed home for 15 days, never leaving
the house, and then I travelled to Dhobley.”[97]
Another 14-year-old boy described a similar experience of confining himself to
his home for three months in order to protect himself from re-recruitment.[98]

The risk of reprisal for escaping was genuine and not only
limited to the children themselves. In several cases children’s family
members who had remained behind in Somalia were threatened and some killed as
al-Shabaab forced the family to inform them of the whereabouts of the child who
escaped.

Ibrahim K. of Baidoa,
northwest of Mogadishu, told Human Rights Watch that after hiding from
al-Shabaab, he returned home to see his family to find that al-Shabaab had gone
there to look for him:

They went to my house to my parents and said, “We
want your child.” My parents refused. They killed my parents, my four
brothers, and three of my four sisters. The girls were crying and then the
other boys tried to defend my parents. Only my 10-year-old sister and I
survived. I wasn’t there. I came and found my sister crying and the
bodies only. My sister was crying and saying, “Go away. They will kill
you and I can’t live alone if they kill you.” I just got my sister
and fled…. We left the bodies and my sister and I ran away.[99]

Similarly, a 13-year-old boy who was recruited by al-Shabaab
in 2011 described how, following his escape from the training camp, al-Shabaab
came looking for him: “Al-Shabaab came looking for us at home. My father
was asked to bring me. He said he didn’t know where I was. There was a
scuffle and they shot my father dead.… With that I decided to go to
Kenya. It’s painful that my father died.”[100]

Al-Shabaab’s relentless campaign against children has
contributed to many families and children on their own seeking refuge in
neighboring Kenya or in other towns across Somalia. Many children and their
relatives told Human Rights Watch that fears of recruitment or re-recruitment
were one of the primary reasons they fled. Children described being
“afraid” and “haunted” by what al-Shabaab had done and found leaving Somalia their only remaining
option.[101]

However, even escape to Kenya does not end the
children’s fear of re-recruitment or abduction.[102]
In Kenya both parents and children described daily fear of the children being
seen and taken by al-Shabaab. Parents and
children told Human Rights Watch that they felt al-Shabaab
had the ability to continue to look for them.[103]
A number of interviewees said that al-Shabaab
continued to have a presence in Kenya and in the camps in Dadaab.[104]
Iskinder P., 15, said: “I am relieved [to be in Kenya] but I am afraid
they might come for me here and return me there.”[105]
Other children described bumping into al-Shabaab
members they had met in their trainings in Kenya and feared direct recruitment
upon being recognized, only compounding the constant sense of fear which
sometimes stopped them from moving freely.

Children in TFG Forces and in TFG Custody

The TFG officially does not recruit children under the age
of 18 into its security forces. However, boys have continued to be found in TFG
forces and those of TFG-affiliated militias. While the TFG is not known to
forcibly recruit children, it lacks systematic and stringent screening
procedures and standards to determine the age of all its recruits and thus
ensure children are excluded. The TFG security forces continue to lack formal
command and control mechanisms and are, instead, made up of an array of groups,
including allied militia and militia linked to TFG officials that are recruited
and integrated in different ways. While recruits for TFG forces who undergo
EU-funded training in Uganda are formally screened for age by several actors,
recruits who are not trained in Uganda or who have been directly recruited from
militias typically have not been. Somalia’s Transitional Federal Charter
128 of February 2004 contains an explicit prohibition on the use of children
under 18 years of age for military service.[106] In
meeting its obligations under international law, the TFG has a positive duty to
ensure that all its military units or militias under its control prohibit the
recruitment and use of children in fighting forces under the age of 15. To
avoid complicity in violations, the TFG cannot allow allied militias to use
children under 15.

Use of Children by the TFG and TFG-aligned Militias

The presence of children within the TFG forces, TFG
militias, and its allied militias continues to be reported. The UN secretary-general
in his April 2011 annual report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict
listed the TFG as responsible for the recruitment and use of child soldiers.[107]
While Human Rights Watch interviewed only one child who had himself been
recruited and served under the TFG, we spoke to several people with firsthand
knowledge of children joining TFG forces in 2010. For example, one former
Hizbul Islam fighter whose militia group later joined the TFG said he saw children
as young as 13 in TFG forces in 2010: “There are children in the TFG, aged
13 to 15 years. There were 80 to 90 in my group of 300 who were between 13 and
16 years old.”[108]

Similarly, Yusri A., a 21-year-old man from Mogadishu,
said two of his friends, aged 16, joined the TFG: “I have many friends
who have joined the TFG and many of them were under 18. Some are soldiers
guarding the presidential palace and some participate in the fighting.”[109]

Neither children nor their families interviewed expressed
concerns about forced recruitment of children by the TFG. “I have never
heard of the TFG [forcibly] recruiting children,” said an 18-year-old
young man from Suuqa Xoola in Mogadishu who knew several boys who had voluntarily
joined the TFG forces.[110]

Instead, enlisting by children into the TFG forces appears
to be a means of survival. Interviewees spoke to Human Rights Watch of
children—classmates, friends, or relatives—joining the TFG in order
to earn money and provide for their families. The desire to seek revenge
against al-Shabaab for abuses committed against their families also influenced
children’s decision to enlist. More vulnerable groups of children who are
without care and protection, such as orphans, appear particularly likely to
join the TFG. For example, the 21-year-old above said of his underage friends:
“They were hungry and were orphans so they joined the TFG. Others who
joined were just angry against al-Shabaab. I spoke to them and they told me
they have nowhere else to go. The TFG supported them.”[111]

A 15-year-old from El Ashabiya described how boys also
joined the TFG in order to escape recruitment from al-Shabaab:

I have friends who joined the TFG because al-Shabaab was
threatening them to get them to join. Some didn’t like al-Shabaab so they
joined the TFG. I have two classmates, ages 15 and 16, who joined the TFG.[112]

However, the one child Human Rights Watch spoke to who had
been recruited by the TFG told a different story. Jaman K., a 16-year-old boy
from Mogadishu, described being forcibly taken from his home by seven men
dressed in military uniform in late 2010. He was taken to a TFG camp near the
seaport where he was trained for 8 months before being sent to Bakara market to
fight during Ramadan 2011:

I was given an AK-47 and sent to Baraka market. It was
around Ramadan [2011]. They just told me to fire. We fought for six days. Then
I was wounded in my leg. Some soldiers bandaged up my leg and then forced me to
go back and fight. That night I escaped.[113]

Human Rights Watch spoke to one 15-year-old boy from
Wardigley in Mogadishu whom ASWJ forcibly recruited from his home in 2010 and
used both as an informant and for fighting on the front line in late 2010 and
in early 2011.[114] We
also received credible reports from local and international contacts of
children within TFG-affiliated militias, including ASWJ and clan militias.[115]
The UN secretary-general reported on the presence of children in ASWJ forces in
2011.[116]
Similarly, in late 2009, Human Rights Watch reported on the recruitment of
ethnic-Somali Kenyan and Somali refugee boys from Dadaab and other areas of
northeastern Kenya to fight in a militia backed by Kenya in southern Somalia. [117]

Children associated with the TFG are often used to man
checkpoints. A high-level TFG government official told Human Rights Watch that he
and his colleagues regularly see children manning TFG checkpoints.[118]

Witnesses also described children fighting for the TFG in
2010. A man who escaped from Mogadishu following the 2010 Ramadan offensive
described seeing children on all sides during the offensive both at checkpoints
and fighting:

Ramadan witnessed heavier fighting between the groups. I
left because I have small children and I was scared. I saw so many children
fighting with both sides. The difference is al-Shabaab boys are controlled by
their seniors. The TFG children can decide if they want to kill you. I saw
children at checkpoints in Afgooye with Hizbul Islam and at the Medina base
with the TFG.[119]

Similarly, Xarid M., an 18-year-old student from Suuqa
Xoola, described his classmates, including boys under age 18, fighting with the
TFG forces:

Some of my classmates joined the TFG. Many were killed or
lost limbs fighting al-Shabaab. I know five boys who joined the TFG in July
2010. One was 10 and the others 15, 20, and two were 18. They were angry as all
of their parents had been killed. The 10-year-old buys food and lives at the
Presidential Palace. He is an orphan. Both his parents were killed by
al-Shabaab so he went to the TFG. Anger drove him. He is my cousin. I spoke to
him by phone but he refused to come with me to Kenya.[120]

Human Rights Watch also received credible reports of the
presence of children on the front lines in Mogadishu with TFG-affiliated
militias during fighting in 2011.[121]
Lokhman, the 15-year-old boy recruited by ASWJ mentioned above, said he was
sent twice to the front lines, first in Wardigley in late 2010 and two months
later near Bakara Market. “After months of training I was given an AK-47
and sent to fight. There were many other children. Around 20 children died in
the fighting around Bakara market.” The boy also described being used as
an informant and sent into al-Shabaab controlled areas to gather information
for ASWJ on at least three occasions.[122]

TFG Commitments to End Recruitment
and Use of Children

The TFG has on several occasions publicly committed to ending
the use of children by its forces but has to date not sufficiently acted on all
these commitments.

In November 2010, then-Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi
Mohamed committed to developing a plan of action to eradicate child soldiering
in Somalia and to designate a focal person to work on this plan with the UN.[123]
A State Minister for Child Protection and Human Rights was appointed by
then-Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi in December 2010, but this position was
not renewed within the new Cabinet in September 2011. During the Universal
Periodic Review session at the UN Human Rights Council in May 2011, the TFG
delegation committed again to eradicating the practice of child soldiering.[124]
On November 23, 2011 the TFG president and the new prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, reiterated
previous commitments to adopt and implement an action plan when they met with
the special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed
Conflict in Mogadishu.[125]

Furthermore, on July 15, 2011, the TFG military chief of staff,
Gen. Abdulkadir Sheikh Ali Dini, issued a general order to all TFG commanders
calling on them to identify cases of human rights abuses, including the recruitment
and deployment of child soldiers, and bring the perpetrators to account either through
disciplinary action or, if necessary, court martial.[126]

The TFG has taken some concrete measures to address the
problem. According to a UN source, a number of underage recruits were
identified and separated during a recruitment drive following the release of
General Dini’s order, but the exact numbers and fate of these children is
not known.[127]
A focal point on child protection has reportedly recently been appointed within
the Ministry of Defense.[128]

However, as of December 2011, the TFG had not developed an
action plan for the prevention of child recruitment, despite its public
commitments and pressure by international actors and partners of the TFG, most
notably the US and the UN, to do so.[129]
The development and implementation of such a plan will determine whether the
TFG and its allied militias can be de-listed from the UN
secretary-general’s list of all parties responsible for the recruitment
and use of child soldiers. Furthermore, Human Rights Watch is not aware of any
member of the TFG forces being held to account to date for the recruitment and
use of children.[130]

Lack of Stringent Screening and Demobilization of Children

Stringent and standardized age screenings are crucial for
removing children from the TFG’s ranks and preventing new recruitment. Human
Rights Watch received several reports of underage recruits enrolling with the
TFG merely by lying about their age. A young man told Human Rights Watch:
“I know eight schoolmates who joined the TFG in 2010. The TFG asks if you
are over 18 but my friends just lied.”[131]

Although the TFG officially requires recruits to be 18, and
while some level of screening is reported to have taken place (particulary
since the issuance of the July 2011 general order), a significant proportion of
TFG forces are, to date, not known to have been formally screened, leaving
significant gaps. The TFG’s backers, including the UN and the US, have
often called on the TFG to screen its recruits.[132]

The only formalized age screening process of TFG recruits
that Human Rights Watch identified were for recruits being trained outside of
Somalia in Bihanga, Uganda, at a training that is funded by the EU. TFG
recruits sent to Bihanga for training reportedly undergo several screenings,
including age screening by AMISOM, more recently with the assistance of
Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) representatives, and the EU.[133]
In Mogadishu, AMISOM/IGAD first carry-out a medical and fitness screening. As
of 2011 the EU started to carry out a second medical screen in Bihanga, Uganda,
which in that year identified at least 46 children among the recruits.[134]

It is critical that this increased vigilance is applied to
all recruitments, including past recruits who have, to date, not been formally
screened. Most soldiers who currently make up the TFG forces, including TFG
soldiers being paid stipends by the US and Italian governments, have not gone
through the Uganda-based training and therefore were not subjected to the same
screening standards.[135]
According to one report, only 1,900 of the current 10,000-strong TFG forces
have undergone training at Bihanga.[136]
Diplomats involved in the Uganda training and in capacity building of the TFG
forces confirmed that recruits integrated into TFG forces from militia groups
or who otherwise have not undergone the EU training are less likely to be subjected
to stringent screening.[137]

More recently, informal measures have reportedly been taken
by actors involved in one way or another with the TFG forces to identify and
separate children. Those involved in the distribution of monthly stipends to
the TFG forces in Mogadishu are reportedly seeking to identify children during
the distribution. Similarly, actors involved in the inclusion of TFG soldiers
onto a biometric database system are reportedly seeking to identify children.[138]

However, the identification of children among the recruits
sent to Uganda in early 2011, despite the fact that the TFG is expected to
request at least three references and dates of birth from each recruit for
these trainings,[139]
suggests that additional efforts are required by the TFG itself during the
first stages of recruitment to strengthen its age screening measures. This
includes ensuring that all its recruits—including those recruited
directly from clan militias and those posted outside of Mogadishu—face
the same screening standards and processes as new recruits sent to Bihanga, and
to ensure that all children are removed from its ranks.

The ongoing lack of a clear and consolidated command
structure within the TFG forces is clearly a challenge to ensuring stringent
screening. Other difficulties include the lack of TFG control over clan
militias,[140] as
well as the complexity of age screening in Somalia, given the lack of birth
certificates and the impact of malnutrition on children’s growth.
However, these challenges do not negate the need for formal and systematic
screening standards and procedures. Governments and others have attempted to
address these complexities in other contexts,
with Nepal cited as a relevant example.[141]
Especially in light of ongoing calls for integration of TFG-aligned militias
into the TFG forces, putting in place systematic screening procedures before
further recruitment or integration of militia forces is crucial if the use of
child soldiers is to cease.

TFG Treatment of Children who are Former al-Shabaab

Children from al-Shabaab who escape to or who are captured
by TFG or AMISOM forces have had few options for protection or rehabilitation.
As Somalia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
and CRC Optional Protocol on children in armed conflict, the TFG should refrain
from acts that would defeat these treaties’ object and purpose.[142]
It should provide for the “rehabilitation and social reintegration”
of child soldiers who come into their control,[143]
and ensure that they “are demobilized or otherwise released from service.”[144]
The TFG should also refrain from detaining or imprisoning children except in conformity
with the law and only as a measure of last resort, for the shortest appropriate
time, and separately from adults.[145] Other
international standards provide that the release and reintegration of children
remains a priority, that children are handed
over to “an appropriate, mandated, independent civilian process,”
and that all appropriate measures be taken to promote the physical and
psychological recovery and social reintegration of the child and to ensure and
reestablish family unity.[146]

Child “Escapees” and Captured Children

In 2011 the TFG began to report instances of individuals,
including children, either escaping from al-Shabaab to the TFG and AMISOM or
being captured by the TFG or AMISOM on the battlefield.[147]
Some of these children reportedly escaped or handed themselves over to AMISOM
while others had been taken from al-Shabaab during or following fighting by
AMISOM. AMISOM reportedly handed over such children to the TFG. As of late
November 2011, there was no standard procedure in place to regulate the
treatment of children handed over to TFG custody.[148]

Some, if not most, of the children who escape or are
captured from al-Shabaab are initially interrogated and screened by the TFG’s
National Security Agency (NSA).[149]
The NSA carries out a security screening. Human Rights Watch spoke to only one
child who had been detained by the TFG and undergone such a process. The child,
a 14-year-old boy from Bardhere, told Human Rights Watch that the TFG picked
him up in late 2010 when it took over the al-Shabaab training camp to which he
was forcibly recruited. He described how TFG forces took him and other captured
children to Villa Somalia, the TFG government compound in Mogadishu, for
interrogation and then released him:

We were taken in vehicles to the presidential palace in
Mogadishu after an eight-hour drive. I knew the presidential palace. AMISOM was
there. We were taken inside the palace—taken to a room with bedding—but
we could walk around the compound. We had a lot of freedom. We spent eight days
there. I was interrogated by the TFG on three occasions. They took me to a separate
room. It was soldiers who interrogated me—they were wearing military
uniforms but they were not armed. I was not scared when I was being asked
questions as I knew I was in the hands of the right people. I was asked
questions about the food I had received and the training I had undergone. After
this they located my parents who came to pick me up. I was taken home and
stayed indoors for three months.[150]

Key actors, including agencies involved in child protection,
have limited information on the process or even access to the children. Reports
suggest that a proportion of escaped and captured children are sent to different
TFG camps and detention facilities that fail to meet basic international
standards. This has raised concerns as to whether the TFG is taking into
account the best interests of the children, including how to rehabilitate and reintegrate
them into society.

One example concerns a group of al-Shabaab “escapees”
who have been held at a TFG training facility known as Marino camp. According
to UN staff, as of May 2011, the TFG was holding 136 escapees from al-Shabaab,
of whom 40 percent were reported to be children, in this camp.[151]
Initially detained by the TFG in cramped facilities at the Villa Somalia
compound, these children were moved in June to Marino camp.[152]
Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the exact numbers of children held at
the camp, as movement into the camp is reportedly fluid. Despite reported
claims by the TFG authorities that basic protection measures, including the
separation of adults and children in the camp, were being taken, both child
protection agencies and diplomats expressed concerns to Human Rights Watch about
the appropriateness of this facility for children and whether basic standards
would be met.[153] Human
Rights Watch also received several reports that the children in the camp were
being used as sources of military intelligence and had been given cell phones
in order to collect information for the TFG.[154]

Informal commitments made in June 2011 by then TFG officials
regarding the transfer of children to civilian-controlled facilities have not
taken place as of November 2011.[155]

In comparison to the reported large number of children
recruited by al-Shabaab, the number of child “escapees” held by the
TFG in Mogadishu is few. AMISOM staff and Somali civil society activists told
Human Rights Watch that the general lack of trust in the TFG is an important
reason why many who escape do not turn to the TFG for protection.[156]

The TFG has reportedly sent a number of captured children
who were allegedly linked to al-Shabaab to Mogadishu Central Prison.[157]
According to a Somali nongovernmental organization, these children have not
been convicted and the detention conditions are dire: some children are malnourished
and others are held alongside adults.[158]
Unconfirmed reports suggest that captured children are also held in other TFG
facilities, including the NSA detention facility near Villa Somalia.[159]

However, the number of children held in TFG detention
facilities is unknown, in part due to limited access and lack of independent
monitoring of the prisons. Human Rights Watch has knowledge of only one Somali
organization that has been given clearance to access Mogadishu Central Prison.
Access to the NSA detention facilities is severely restricted and media reports
point to the presence of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) within NSA
facilities.[160]
To date there has been no formal or regular international access to monitor and
assess the protection-related issues associated with the detention of children
captured by AMISOM or TFG forces.

Similarly, while Human Rights Watch was unable to speak to
any child who had been detained by TFG-affiliated militias, in March 2011
UNICEF expressed concern about the detention of children at an unknown location
by TFG-affiliated militias in the town of Belet Hawa following fighting in Gedo
region.[161]
In light of the intensified fighting between the TFG and TFG-affiliated
militias against al-Shabaab in areas outside of Mogadishu since late 2011,
unlawful secret detention of children captured from al-Shabaab could increase
if regular independent monitoring does not take place.

The TFG has legitimate security concerns regarding captured
al-Shabaab fighters, including those who are children. However, it should seek
to ensure that its response makes the children’s protection and
longer-term rehabilitation and reintegration a priority. Both the TFG and
relevant child protection agencies should ensure that appropriate and adequate
civilian rehabilitation and reintegration programs are in place, and that
captured children are promptly transferred to such programs. Captured children
should not be detained solely for their association with al-Shabaab.

Limited Child Protection Programs

Child protection programs are available in Mogadishu for
children formerly associated with fighting forces. However, individuals
familiar with these programs say they have been limited due to operational and
security constraints. Given the significant number of children who are reported
to have been associated in one way or another with al-Shabaab, the TFG, or
TFG-aligned militias, and the ongoing vulnerability of children to recruitment,
this poses a challenge both to the successful protection and demobilization of
children.[162]

Furthermore, such programs do not always respond to the
needs of these groups of children. They provide limited financial support to
the children involved and lack medium and longer-term opportunities. According
to NGOs that met with the children held at Jazeera camp following their return
from the Bihanga training, a significant number of the children wanted to
remain with the TFG forces primarily for financial reasons rather than sign up
for the vocational trainings organized by local Somali NGOs.[163]
While recognizing the significant challenges facing child protection and
education programs in Somalia, such responses will also be crucial to the
success of any effective screening procedures.

III. Forced Marriage and Rape of Girls by
al-Shabaab

In addition to recruiting
girls and young women to provide domestic work and other forms of direct
support for its fighters in camps and on the front lines, al-Shabaab has also
targeted them for rape and forced marriage.[164] Al-Shabaab members have assaulted girls and young
women in schools, public spaces, and their homes. Because perpetrators
of rape and other violence in Somalia enjoy almost total impunity, the victims and
their families often have very little power to resist, and those who do face
great risks. Victims of rape and their families rarely have anywhere to turn to
for support and are at times stigmatized and ostracized within their own
communities. Flight is often the only form of protection that remains: many refugee
families told Human Rights Watch that one of the main reasons they left Somalia
was fear of forced marriage.

Rape by al-Shabaab occurs both within the context of such
forced marriages and outside. Sexual and gender-based violence in Somalia is
believed to be widespread but significantly underreported and committed both by
combatants and civilians.[165]

International human rights
law places significant obligations on states to specify the minimum age of
marriage and to prevent child marriage.[166] Human Rights Watch opposes all non-consensual, or
forced, marriages of women and girls, and calls on states to set the minimum
legal age of marriage at 18.[167] International
humanitarian law and international human rights law both prohibit rape and
other sexual violence.[168] When crimes of sexual violence are committed as part
of armed conflict, they can be prosecuted as war crimes.[169]

Forced and Early Marriage by al-Shabaab

Al-Shabaab has imposed forced and early marriage as part of
the group’s effort to impose its harsh version of Sharia on every aspect
of the personal lives of women and girls. The practices described to Human
Rights Watch were not simply the actions of individual fighters taking
advantage of impunity to impose marriage on individual girls. Rather, both
girls who were targeted and other eyewitnesses consistently described a more
organized practice in which al-Shabaab preached marriage with fighters to girls
still in school (see below), and abducted and detained girls under the
group’s auspices for this purpose. Human Rights Watch did not interview
any girls forced to marry fighters in 2010 and 2011, but did interview
eyewitnesses, girls who had been repeatedly threatened by al-Shabaab with
forced marriage, and a young woman who escaped after being abducted but before
being forcibly married. According to the children interviewed, escape from
al-Shabaab is difficult, and likely more so once married. The forced marriage
of girls and young women to al-Shabaab fighters has also been widely reported
by others.[170]

The Story of a Girl Taken by al-Shabaab

It was around 8 a.m. in January 2011. It was the opening
of school and it happened just after the first lesson. Several men came to
the school by car and asked all ladies and boys to assemble and took all the
older boys 17 plus and all the girls who could be wives (were considered mature).
They had two vehicles. They had one for the ladies with closed doors and they
took us to the camp. We were taken and paraded in front of old al-Shabaab men
who were masked. One old man said, “Welcome.” We were taken to a
room and given water to sprinkle around the compound to cool it down. Once we
finished that we were taken back to our house.

They put a padlock on the door, but it was not strong.
And when al-Shabaab went to eat, the girls forced the lock. We pushed and
pushed and then when it opened we ran away. When we ran, they saw us and
opened fire. Four girls were caught by al-Shabaab and ten who were fired at,
we think, got shot. One girl out of the four of us who escaped knew the route
well and she got us to Medina. I was the youngest; the other girls were all
older. After several hours I got home.

But al-Shabaab came the next day and said they wanted me
back. My father said no, so they took my father and my five-year-old brother.
My other siblings and I were at the market, they took the ones that they
found.

—Aamina M. (not her real name), 13-year-old girl,
Kenya, June 1, 2011

The difference between forced marriages by al-Shabaab and
marriages that might have been somewhat more voluntary in nature were not
always clear, particularly in witness accounts. However, the context under
which these marriages are taking place—under al-Shabaab’s brutal
repression and often direct threats—and the involvement of children under
18 makes the very notion of voluntariness questionable. As a 17-year-old boy
from Mogadishu pointed out: “Usually they [al-Shabaab] were in town and
when they would see girls from school they would find one, confront her, say
they want to marry her. Sometimes they would go to the parents but if the
parents refuse they just take her. I saw it all the time. If she accepts, good.
If she refuses, she’s kidnapped. Either way, it’s better to take
the option of agreeing.”[171]

Al-Shabaab abducted girls from school, en route, in public
places, and from their homes, often through threats and violence against them
and their family members. A teacher, 46, from Mogadishu described how
al-Shabaab rounded-up girls from his school in January 2010:

It was tea break, exactly at 10 a.m. The girls and boys
were separated [by al-Shabaab] at break and they were not allowed to play. They
asked the girls to stand and paraded them. They looked and picked 15- and
16-year-old girls, one was 17 years old. They took 12 girls in total. These
girls were taken to be wives. They were told they should join. They said
… the girls were to become al-Shabaab wives. After this incident all the
girls over age 15 ran away or dropped out of school. One hundred fifty girls
dropped out of school.[172]

The mother of a young woman from Hawlwadaq in Mogadishu said
that four al-Shabaab fighters approached her one evening in early 2010 at her
tea kiosk and told her that they wanted to marry off her daughter, who was 17-years-old
at the time: “They told the girl that they had fallen in love with her. I
complained that she was too young. But they said, ‘If you don’t
accept our demand, we will slaughter you in front of her.’ We locked the
kiosk and fled to Afgooye right then.”[173]

A 19-year-old student from Bakara in Mogadishu described how
girls were taken from his school:

They came and took many girls from my school. If they
refused they were taken by force. I saw three girls taken by force. They were
around 14 or 15 [years old] and it was on the seventh day of Ramadan 2010 [when
there was heavy fighting]. Girls were taken at gunpoint and forced to become
wives of combatants. One parent who protested was killed. One girl said she
could not go and al-Shabaab shot her in the forehead in front of my class. When
the school asked why they did that, al-Shabaab said that she was a spy for the
government. She was 19 years old.[174]

Girls may be targeted both by unknown al-Shabaab fighters as
well as by people very close to them. The wife of an al-Shabaab fighter
described the anxiety of seeing her son taken away to fight by her husband and
then facing attempts by her husband to marry-off their 14-year-old daughter to
an al-Shabaab member:

Then he started talking about marrying off my daughter. I
pleaded with him, telling him he had taken my son, at least leave me and spare
my daughter. She was 14 years old. One day he brought a man back to the house.
He was 30 and Somali. I think he was part of the group who had come to my house
when they took [my son]. My daughter was there when he came. The man then left.
A few days later two men came inside the house and one came inside the house
and started hitting me with a rifle butt and told me to go to the bedroom. But
I refused. Then they left. I left the following day with six of my children.[175]

The risk of repercussions for
girls or their families who resist marriage is serious and very real. An
18-year-old woman from Karan, Mogadishu, described how, shortly before Ramadan
in 2010, her brother was stabbed in the eye when he tried to stop three
al-Shabaab fighters from taking her from their home, saying they wanted to
marry her off. She fled Mogadishu the following day, leaving her brother, who
was still in the hospital, behind.[176]

The 46-year-old teacher from
Mogadishu quoted above described the fate of one girl they took from the school
who resisted a forced marriage:

She was given to a commander. He was an old man. She was
taken to El Ashabiya. He told his men to kill her and they filmed it and sent
it to mobile phones. My students saw it. They saw the mutilation. They brought
back her head to the school and assembled all of the girls and said, “This
is an example of what will happen if you misbehave.” The girl was 16
years old.[177]

While Human Rights Watch primarily heard cases of girls 15
and above taken by al-Shabaab for marriage, a 17-year-old boy from Jilib
described how the wife of a local al-Shabaab leader in Jilib, Middle Juba,
prepared his friend, a 13-year-old girl, to become the wife of a combatant:

There is a new district commissioner now and he is an
al-Shabaab boss. His wife has a big building and girls are brought there and
they learn about jihad. They go there and then learn about jihad and are
married to fighters. There are girls as young as 15 years old. They go every
Friday to her house. Salima [not her real name] went, she is 13 and she told
me.[178]

Human Rights Watch received several reports of girls and
young women being prepared for or already married off to al-Shabaab fighters
being kept in al-Shabaab camps or houses of combatants. Several boys recruited
by al-Shabaab spoke of the presence of girls and young women married to
combatants in the camps. Girls are also kept in specific houses for combatants.
A 17-year-old boy from Wardigley in Mogadishu explained how al-Shabaab buys
houses and furnishes them and then combatants use them: “If one combatant
dies another uses it.”[179]

A 16-year-old girl from
Bondhere, Mogadishu, who was to be forcibly married off to an al-Shabaab
fighter, described her ordeal and being locked up:

In mid-2010 al-Shabaab took me from my house. They were
controlling the entire neighborhood and locked me in a house. They told me,
“We will marry you to our leader.” I was in that house for a month.
I was crying day and night. Then I said they should go and ask my father. My
father said, “I will discuss it with my daughter, let her come to me
first.” They released me. I told my mother I didn’t want it. After
that I went to live with my grandmother in a different neighborhood controlled
by the TFG, Hamer Wayne. After that when they came to our house, they took my
two brothers.[180]

Girls and their families have very limited means of
protection against abduction for forced marriage. Some girls drop out of school
and are often then confined to the home. Girls also move, although generally
temporarily, to their extended family or acquaintances in the TFG controlled
areas.

Fleeing to Kenya or another
part of Somalia is often the only choice families have to protect their
daughters. Human Rights Watch spoke to 12 parents and children who said they
fled Somalia either out of fear of seeing their daughters or sisters forcibly
married or after al-Shabaab visited their homes threatening to do so.

A 48-year-old mother from
Yaqshiid, Mogadishu, for example, explained why her family fled Mogadishu in
November 2010: “Al-Shabaab came directly to my husband and said, ‘You
bring your two boys to fight for us and the two girls to marry fighters and
bring two machine guns.’ My husband is a businessman and is wealthy.
Because of this scenario we ran. Up until now we have been running. How can I
give my girls?”[181]

Rape by al-Shabaab

The issue of rape in Somalia is taboo. There is profound
stigma associated with sexual violence and, therefore, victims and their
families rarely speak out. Human Rights Watch interviewed one girl and one
young woman in the course of this research who described their rape by
al-Shabaab members, the former the victim of a gang rape, the latter in the
context of a planned forced marriage. A handful of Somali refugees also spoke
to us about other incidents of rape perpetuated by al-Shabaab forces, and Human
Rights Watch and others have documented sexual violence by TFG forces and
TFG-affiliated militias.[182] Our
individual interviews, as well as secondary evidence, raise grave concerns that
sexual and gender-based violence in Somalia is widespread and perpetuated not
only by combatants but also by civilians.[183]

A 17-year-old girl from
Mogadishu described to Human Rights Watch how al-Shabaab fighters raped her one
evening as she went to buy food:

My younger sister and I were sent one night to go to the
store to buy things. Then al-Shabaab appeared in front of us. There were very
many. They caught us. They beat us but my sister managed to escape from them.
They told me, “You will be taken to the station. Why are you walking
around at this hour? We will arrest you.” But they didn’t take me
to the station. They raped me. I got pregnant and have this small baby. There
were six but I went unconscious after two so I don’t know if all six
raped me. They used the butt of the gun to pierce my eye [indicating her left
eye which was obviously damaged and which she said was blind]. Then they just
left me.[184]

The girl became pregnant from the attack and her 16-year-old
sister, who was severely beaten, became mentally unstable. Both girls dropped out
of school after that.[185]

A 16-year-old boy from
Yaaqshiid, Mogadishu, who was forcibly recruited and sent to an al-Shabaab
training camp, described seeing fighters rape girls who came into the camp in
search of food:

There were ladies in the camp. Al-Shabaab fighters raped
them. They were teenagers, they don’t like older ladies. I saw it when I
was in the camp. There were girls who went to the camp to look for food, and
they are kept there and then released. I saw 20 girls that this happened to. I
was providing food to them. The girls I saw were all between 15 and 20 years
old.[186]

Given the situation of widespread violence and impunity in
which rape takes place, girls, young women, and their families often have very
little power and means, notably in al-Shabaab controlled areas, to resist rape
or to speak out against the violation. One woman from Bakara, Mogadishu, for
example, described attending the funeral of a girl who had been shot dead by an
al-Shabaab fighter after he tried to rape her and she resisted.[187]

Victims of rape and, at times,
their families may also face severe stigma and repercussions in their
communities. The mother of the 17-year-old victim of rape told Human Rights
Watch how she was attacked after speaking out about the rape of her daughter:

Women who sympathized with al-Shabaab threatened me and
said, “We will beat you for saying that al-Shabaab raped your daughter.”
They cut me with a knife. They even told me that if I didn’t leave they
would kill me for saying al-Shabaab raped my daughter.[188]

The girl herself spoke of the
stigma that she faced after becoming pregnant as a result of the rape:

I was going to a private school, class 1 [before the rape].
I stopped after that when people heard my story. I had many problems with the
community. Some people told me to abort the child and I feared for my life.
Some were laughing at me and I said that it was not my fault. That it had
happened accidentally and I didn’t wish to get pregnant. After I
delivered the baby I was hiding so I didn’t go to school.[189]

Facing stigma, insecurity,
and lack of access to the necessary health facilities, flight is often the only
option. The girl left Mogadishu and fled to Kenya as a result:

I came to Kenya six months ago with the baby. The baby was
sick and also because of the stigma and discrimination in the community. And
seeing al-Shabaab made me even more traumatized.[190]

IV. Al-Shabaab Attacks on Schools, Teachers, and Students

Schools have featured heavily in al-Shabaab’s combat operations
as well their attempt to control Somalis’ everyday activities. The group
has literally turned schools into battlegrounds, using them as places from
which to fire on AMISOM and TFG forces, intentionally placing students and
teachers in harm’s way from return fire, and in some cases directly
attacking students and education buildings. It has used schools to recruit
students and teachers as fighters and to abduct girls for rape and forced
marriage. It has aggressively interfered with teaching, prohibiting English and
other subjects deemed contrary to their version of Islam, threatening and at
times killing teachers, using classroom lectures on jihad to recruit students
into their forces, replacing teachers with their own members, and imposing harsh
and unwelcome Islamic restrictions on girls’ dress and interactions with
male students. Classes have been left bereft of educational content, teachers
have fled, and, where schools have not shut down entirely, children—deprived
of any meaningful education and afraid for their safety—have dropped out
in large numbers.

Many schools in Mogadishu have been destroyed or closed. A
handful of schools—along with teachers and a number of pupils—have
relocated, for example to El Ashabiya, in order to escape the fighting in
Mogadishu, but even there have come under threat. The teaching profession has
been decimated as many teachers have fled the country. This section focuses on
attacks on students, teacher, and schools in 2010 and 2011.

Under international humanitarian law (the laws of war), all
civilians, including students and teachers, are protected from attack.[191]
Acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among the
civilian population are prohibited.[192] The
laws of war also forbid attacks directed at civilian objects, including
schools, except and only for such time as they are being used by warring
parties for military purposes.[193] Using
students and teachers as “human shields”—the deliberate use
of civilians to protect one’s forces against attacks—is a war
crime.[194] Return
fire in such situations may violate the prohibitions against indiscriminate
attacks or attacks that cause disproportionate civilian harm.[195]

The Story of a Teacher Forced to Flee Somalia

“Al-Shabaab has killed teachers, threatened
teachers, and taken students,” a geography, mathematics, and Arabic
teacher from Medina, Mogadishu, told Human Rights Watch.[196] In
December 2009, six al-Shabaab fighters came to this teacher’s class:

I was teaching … a geography lesson and they told
me, “We warned you not to teach these subjects.” They took a
bayonet and stabbed me in the right upper lip…. They did it in front of
the students.… They picked a female teacher as she was not wearing a
hijab [headscarf]. They came to her class and said, “Why don’t
you have a hijab and veil?” They took her in a Toyota vehicle and her
body was found … near the mosque.

The teacher changed schools after that, but things did not
improve. He said that in the first months of 2010, “I had students who
were killed for practicing English as they were walking home. They were
between 10 and 17 years old. An al-Shabaab fighter asked, ‘Are you
speaking English…. You don’t want to be Muslim?’ He then
shot them.”

In late 2010, al-Shabaab “came to the school and
picked 20 students between 15 and 17 years…. They took 3 girls—a
12-year-old and two 14-year-olds. No one tried to stop them … it was
impossible.” They continued coming to the school after that, he said:

When al-Shabaab came into the school, children would
start jumping from windows. Some would end up with broken arms and legs and
teeth as a result. The windows were high and they would scramble over the
lockers to try and jump out, others would pull others down trying to escape.
One day al-Shabaab stopped a child from jumping by pulling his legs and he
fell and lost all of his front teeth…he was nine, unconscious.

At that time, al-Shabaab started “to influence the
curriculum. They said English could not be taught. They said besides Arabic
and religious subjects everything else was banned.” By that point, he
said, “I always wondered if I would come home at the end of the
day.”

The teacher arrived as a refugee in Kenya in May 2011.
“What forced me to leave was that the deputy and headmaster were shot.
They were killed because they refused to follow instructions and stop
teaching certain subjects. This is what forced me to flee.”

Laws-of-War Violations
Involving Schools

Al-Shabaab has deliberately attacked students, teachers, and
education buildings.[197] It has
also has used school grounds to launch artillery attacks on opposing forces,
sometimes with students and teachers still inside, drawing return fire from TFG
and AMISOM forces. Such attacks have resulted in the damage and destruction of
school buildings, the death of students in or near school compounds, and the
closure of schools. In some instances, al-Shabaab has used schools for weapons
training and weapons’ storage and has taken over school buildings after
their closure.

On October 4, 2011, a car bomb exploded outside a compound housing several
government ministries, including the Ministry of Education, at the strategic
junction of Km4 (Kilometer 4) in Mogadishu. At least 100 people died and 90
were wounded. Many of the casualties were students and their parents awaiting
exam results and students seeking scholarships abroad.[198] Al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamed Raghe claimed
responsibility for the attack, warned civilians to stay away from TFG institutions,
and threatened further attacks. Bashar Abdullahi Nur, the suicide bomber, taped
an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio
station. “Now those who live abroad are taken to a college and never
think about the hereafter. They never think about the harassed Muslims,"
he said. "He wakes up in the morning, goes to college and studies and
accepts what the infidels tell him, while infidels are massacring
Muslims."[199] The attack echoed al-Shabaab’s suicide bombing
of a medical school graduation ceremony in Mogadishu that killed at least 19 people
in 2009.

Several students told Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab
deliberately attacked their school buildings in 2010 and 2011.

Ibrahim K., 14, said that in late 2010 he was on his way to
school in Baidoa, in south-central Somalia, when he saw al-Shabaab fighters
driving towards the school. “I ran to my class and told people to
run,” he told Human Rights Watch. “There were many [fighters],
planning to come to classes and take away teachers and students. When students
shouted and some ran away, then al-Shabaab shelled [the school with four
shells] … from the vehicle.” Ibrahim said he “saw the bodies
of his teachers.”[200]

Khorfa S., 16, said that al-Shabaab shelled his school in
Mogadishu during the 2010 Ramadan offensive. “I think they were targeting
my school,” he explained. “Why else would they continually attack
the school? In one incident one of the neighboring classrooms was
shelled…. Sometimes you would hear reprisals from the TFG but they would
fire beyond the school.”[201]

Daahir J., 15, told Human Rights Watch that he believed a
suicide bomber detonated explosives inside his primary school around the same
time:

There was a big explosion in one classroom in my school.
The explosion killed my 13-year-old brother…. I think it was a suicide
bomber. Not only there was no sound before the explosion and generally when
something is launched you hear some sort of movement and whistling but also it
affected just one room, which is not always the case with artillery
fire…. We don’t know who detonated the bomb as everyone in the classroom
died.[202]

Another 14-year-old boy said that al-Shabaab “placed
mines at the school gate” after the school refused to allow the group to
recruit there, including just before Ramadan in 2009, when TFG forces were
expected to pass. It was not clear whether the mines were directed at the TFG
or the school but, either way, a mine exploded while “students were
exiting the school at break time.” Sixteen students died from the
explosion, he said, including four of his classmates, ranging in age from 10 to
21.[203]

It was not possible to corroborate these accounts as there
is no systematic monitoring and reporting of attacks on schools in Mogadishu.
But direct attacks aside, equally terrifying and more common in witness
accounts is al-Shabaab’s practice of trapping students and teachers as
human shields inside schools and firing on TFG/AMISOM forces from within or
from just behind schools, while frightened children and adults held in the
school await return fire. “They
use the school as a shield,” said one Mogadishu teacher. “They
stand outside the school and fire, and then the fighters just melt into the
school as students.”[204]

An older student described what happened at his primary
school:

In November 2010 on a Sunday at around 4 p.m., my school
was hit one day after fighting broke out. Al-Shabaab started firing from just
behind my school compound—just behind the back of the classes. They were
firing I think towards Villa Somalia. There had been sporadic fighting in the
area for some time. Al-Shabaab were firing artillery that seemed to be rockets.
Often foreign fighters are manning these weapons. I was in class when I started
hearing the fighting and firing from al-Shabaab. I ran outside. After
al-Shabaab fires, we generally run away as we know that AMISOM replies….

AMISOM/TFG started responding…. The school was hit by
a weapon that sounded like a thunder when coming and then made a big explosion.
The reprisal hit an empty classroom. A lot of the pupils were outside of the
classrooms. The debris and shrapnel from the explosion hit some children who
were outside in the compound fetching water. Three children were killed in this
incident and six were injured….

My school was shut down after this. [Another] school was
also shut down soon after, after it was hit in fighting.[205]

An 18-year-old student from Hawlwadag, Mogadishu, related
another incident from October 2010:

One day al-Shabaab entered the school and went up to the
first floor. They were shooting big guns from the school…. 15 to 20
al-Shabaab entered the first floor and fired. They closed the door and we
stayed in the class. We were locked in from 10 or 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.—there
was continuous fighting. We heard return fire but it did not hit the school, it
hit all around us.[206]

Another Mogadishu student, age 18, described what happened
in his school during Ramadan 2010:

Al-Shabaab came into the compound of the school and told us
to stay in class. It was noon and they set up a Hobiye [a surface to air rocket
launcher] and they started launching from inside the school compound. They set
it up in the “playing” area…. Some students tried to get out
of the compound but they were turned back by al-Shabaab. We were trapped for
two hours and they were firing in the direction of K-4 [TFG/AMISOM-held territory].
There was incoming fire coming back at our direction. There were five rockets
hitting around the school compound. One landed as we were released and it
killed eight students who were walking home. They came in a series of four
rockets. The students killed were 17, 16, 18, and 19 years old.[207]

Another student said al-Shabaab held him and his classmates
in the school compound in Al Baraka, Mogadishu, for a whole day during Ramadan
2010: “We were told to sit. We were there from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. They were
firing rockets at the TFG. The TFG returned fire and it landed outside the
school compound…. We found limbs and blood in the school compound after.
There were about 200 al-Shabaab fighters in the compound. This happened several
times. The school was only separated by a road from AMISOM.”[208]

A
teacher from Mogadishu said that at his school, al-Shabaab forces:

would make a shelter when the students were inside. When
they would fire a mortar, they would get retaliated against.

One time they brought a big gun into the school. I tried to
tell them not to fire their mortar from here because the reply will kill us.
They refused. I asked them to let the students go. They accepted and we ran
away. They launched as we were running away. They fired five or six mortars,
took their gun and left. There was a reply. Two classes were damaged, burned by
the response. The tables and chairs were burned and the walls destroyed.[209]

Other students described similar incidents in 2010 and 2009.[210]
According to the UN secretary-general’s report on Somalia, attacks on
school buildings have increased since late 2008.[211]

Several other students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said
that their schools were damaged and students and teachers were wounded or
killed from artillery and small arms fire.[212]

Two students said that al-Shabaab raised the group’s
white flag over their schools,[213] and
others said the group stored weapons there, which were used among other things
for training students,[214]
effectively making the school a military target that puts students at grave
risk. One student said that at his school al-Shabaab “had hand grenades,
guns, and pistols. The school had a big compound and they hid things in bushes
and trees and behind books and lockers. Teachers knew but could not say
anything.”[215]

When al-Shabaab use of schools and generalized fighting have
shut schools down, al-Shabaab has on occasion taken over the buildings, making
it impossible for school to resume there and placing the structures at further
risk of being damaged or destroyed. The older student whose primary school was
shut down (in addition to other schools) after being hit in November 2010,
said: “Al-Shabaab took several of these schools as bases afterwards,
including Imman Shafiiri and Somalia Youth League school.”[216]
A boy who dropped out in August 2010 said by January 2011, al-Shabaab had
occupied the school: “When I came back I went to the school to see it and
it was an al-Shabaab zone. I saw their vehicles—technicals—there.
There was no more learning. I saw my classmate there who had become part of
al-Shabaab. I saw him outside the school and he told me they were staying the
school compound day and night.”[217] The UN
secretary-general reported that armed groups occupied at least 34 schools from
early 2008 to early 2010.[218]

While it is not a violation of the laws of war for military
forces to occupy buildings in a manner that does not put civilians at risk, the
prolonged closure of schools without adequate alternative facilities is a
violation of the students’ right to education under international human
rights law.[219]

Recruitment of Children from Schools

I was always worried when they were at school. You always
worried when the day ended to see if your boy was recruited or your girl was
kidnapped. Every day you get your child back at the end you are thankful. Every
day there were incidents reported from the school.

—Maandiq R. (not her real name), mother whose
17-year-old daughter was taken by al-Shabaab during a school tea break in
Bakara, Mogadishu

Al-Shabaab has used schools to recruit boys and girls, both
by subjecting them to organizational propaganda and by force, as detailed
above. “They target schools as they see them as recruiting grounds, but
also because they see school and education as a waste of time,” said
16-year-old Khorfa. “‘Why go to school when you could be
fighting?’ is their view.”[220] Of the
23 children Human Rights Watch interviewed who were recruited or abducted by
al-Shabaab in 2010 and 2011, 14 were taken from their schools or en route.
Twenty-four other students told us that al-Shabaab took children from their
schools or on the way during this same time period.

The methodical manner in which al-Shabaab has used schools
as recruiting grounds was recounted with meticulous detail by many of the
students interviewed. They reported that al-Shabaab regularly visited schools
and forcibly removed children individually, often at gunpoint, from classrooms.
On other occasions, they lined up students and faculty en masse in the school
compound and selected children they deem fit to serve as fighters, suicide
bombers, wives, or for domestic duties who they then take back to their
training camps. Witnesses to these sweeps on schools said that the students had
little to no chance of refusing without the risk of being beaten or killed.

Xarid M.’s description of how al-Shabaab took children
from school was typical:

We would see al-Shabaab coming and try and save ourselves.
We would disappear through any opening in the classroom. Once it caused a
stampede. Some children would fall from the windows and others would jump and
fall on others. There were many injuries from those trying to escape.

They would come to class and look at the ones who were the
right age to fight.... They would beat and whip the students and force them to
go. They came in looking angry and saying, “You think this is the last
battle? Why are you youth sitting in class and not trying to help?”

No one could challenge them. They brought BMs, RPGs [rocket
propelled grenades], and AK-47s and demonstrated them.[221]

I was in class three. Al-Shabaab came with a vehicle and
they knocked at the door and we opened and they came in. They said, “We
want this boy, this girl.” The teacher just kept quiet. The children
followed them. There were two men with wrapped heads, uniforms, different
colors but a lot of green. They took two boys and three girls who never came
back....

The next day I didn’t go to school because I was
afraid of al-Shabaab. I never went back to school after that.[222]

Like Deka, many other children said they dropped out because
al-Shabaab was forcibly recruiting students from school. “When the
recruitment started in school, the classes shrunk,” said 15-year-old Waberi
B. of his school in El Ashabiya. “In my class there were 40 students, and
when I left there were only 13 and no girls. There were no girls in the whole
school by December 2010.[223]

Abuses against Teachers

Al-Shabaab has forcibly recruited teachers, and threatened
and killed those who try to dissuade children from joining the group or who
teach English and other prohibited subjects. Women teachers have faced
additional threats and violence to stop them from teaching as part of
al-Shabaab’s efforts to ban women from working in public places.

Teachers have faced intense pressure to join al-Shabaab.
Faaid J., who taught English and mathematics at secondary schools in Mogadishu
and then in El Ashabiya, said that al-Shabaab singled out teachers: “For
us teachers they were calling us to join, especially on Friday. On Friday they
would say, ‘You teachers have to join.’ Many times they talked with
me personally. I felt very afraid—I was afraid of assassination.”
Faaid said he believed he would be killed because he had already seen
“several people killed after al-Shabaab came several times and called them
to join them.”[224] Faaid
fled to Kenya in January 2011.

Al-Shabaab tried to recruit Lebna M. in Kismayo throughout
2010. When he refused, he said al-Shabaab sent him a message through a relative
that if he did not work with them, he would “pay with his life.”
“They started intimidating me on the phone every day,” he told us.
In December 2010, al-Shabaab members arrested him at his school and detained
him. They accused him of being “an infidel who refuses to fight for
Islam” and an informer, placing a knife at his neck and threatening to
behead him, and interrogated him while plunging him in and out of the sea.
After 25 days captivity he was able to escape and flee to Kenya.[225]

Wehliye D. said al-Shabaab forcibly recruited him with all
the students in his duqsi in Buale in October 2010. Al-Shabaab members
whipped him in front of his students, he said, and assigned him to cook in a
training camp. After some 80 days, he escaped. Wehliye showed us scars on his
neck consistent with whipping.[226]

Abdu A., a secondary school teacher, said that in December
2009, al-Shabaab fighters who were “very young boys” stopped and
threatened him multiple times in Baidoa. “Leave English, stop working
with foreign organizations, join our cause,” one ordered him. “From
that day I decided to stop my job in the school and planned how to
leave.”[227]

Human Rights Watch also interviewed five students who said
al-Shabaab had recruited teachers by force from their schools.[228]
Two girls said they witnessed al-Shabaab members with wrapped faces, dressed in
black “Pakistani clothes” take all of their
teachers—approximately 10 men—from their school in 2010.[229]
Dawo G. described what she saw and heard:

Al-Shabaab came in a full vehicle. They came upstairs and
called everyone down.... They said, “Come and be part of jihad.”
They told the teachers, “We will take the students or we will take
you.” The teachers said, “Instead of taking the Somali children, it
is better you take us.”... Then they took the teachers and the school was
closed.[230]

In addition to their own recruitment, teachers who try to
protect their students have faced threats and violence. A visibly traumatized
secondary school teacher from Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that in
September 2009 al-Shabaab shot his wife because he urged students not to join
them and to stay in school. “I saw that day after day I was losing one,
two, three students,” he said.

I told my students not to join these fucking groups. I
said, “You are a student.” Then those guys called me and said I had
to stop telling these children not to go to jihad. I said, “I don’t
interfere with private lives. I just tell my students not to go.” They
gave me a last warning, I refused. They tried to kill me and shot my pregnant
wife. She delivered the baby dead after 15 days. She died.[231]

Waberi B. said he saw his Arabic and science teacher shot
for trying to stop al-Shabaab from taking a classmate in 2010:

My 13-year-old friend was in my class. When al-Shabaab
tried to take him to the camp, he said he was the only son of his mother. They
said he would be killed before he could even explain. They hit him with a gun
butt and forced him out of the class. The teacher intervened and al-Shabaab said
he was the one telling the kids not to come. They then shot him in front of our
class.[232]

Teachers have also been threatened and killed for teaching
subjects that al-Shabaab objects to. Labaan M., 12, told us al-Shabaab killed
his father in mid-2010 for teaching English: “English is just a normal
language and they just killed him. He complained several times that he was
threatened to stop teaching English.... He was killed at the school gate, just
as he walked out.”[233]

Salaal M. said an al-Shabaab commander in Mogadishu
threatened him in February 2010 for teaching culture and music to primary level
students, subjects the commander said were “not important.” The
commander said, “If you continue to teach, then don’t blame me if
there are consequences.” Salaal told us that al-Shabaab also ordered the
school management and other teachers to stop teaching certain subjects,
including physical education. But al-Shabaab took the science teacher and
“beheaded him.” According to the teacher, “They brought the
head back to the neighborhood and put it in the street so people could see.”[234]

Although fewer women than men were teaching in Somalia even
before the rise of al-Shabaab, al-Shabaab has specifically targeted female
teachers in order to stop them from working. Ummi N., who, as mentioned below,
al-Shabaab whipped for teaching biology, explained that al-Shabaab said
“there could be no female teachers.” She said that at her school in
2009, “there were
seven female teachers and six of them ran away.”[235] She, and another teacher,
Qamar R., also said al-Shabaab threatened them and told them to stop teaching.[236]

Ishaar C., who attended primary school in Mogadishu until he
left in March 2011, said that he had female teachers before 2010 but then
al-Shabaab came to the school: “They said, ‘You are supposed to be
in your house, not teaching, so don’t come here again.’ Al-Shabaab
came for two days and said that, and then they [the female teachers] stopped.”[237]
Ishaar said simply, “there were no female teachers because it was not
allowed.”[238] Ibitsaam,
17, told us that al-Shabaab took all three female teachers from her school to
cook for them in late 2010.[239]

Human Rights Watch spoke to a woman from Mogadishu who
persisted in teaching until October of 2011. She said she taught first aid part
time, and in February 2010, four armed al-Shabaab members came to her house and
told her to stop teaching. “They said a woman should not come out and be
teaching.... I said I would leave and they left.” However, she did not
stop and they returned in October. “I was sitting outside my house
cooking,” she explained.

They entered my compound and said, “Are you the
person who was meant to stop teaching?” Then one started to kick me in my
back, and another kicked the fire where I was cooking. I screamed and cried.
They kicked a pot of boiling water, and it splashed and burned me. My husband
came running out from the house. They shot him.... I ran…. I left him
bleeding. I ran away and hid in a bush and then I went into labor because of
the stress. My mother came looking for me and found me…. [and helped me] deliver.[240]

Taliso R. said she fled to Kenya in March 2011
“because I got a threat, an anonymous call. They said I was the only
female teacher. In Islam I was not meant to work. They said, ‘If you
continue you will see the consequences.’ They said they would kill me, so
I came with my daughter.”[241]

Control of Curriculum and
Restrictions on Girls

Al-Shabaab has aggressively interfered with the content of
the education provided in the schools in areas under its control, banning
English and certain other subjects, replacing courses with lectures on jihad, war,
and weapons handling to promote recruitment, and imposing arduous and unwelcome
restrictions on girls’ dress and interactions with male students.
Al-Shabaab’s interference in the schools beyond its more direct assaults
on students and teachers has deprived children of their right to education.

In accordance with its strict interpretation of Islam, al-Shabaab
has banned English in schools, both language instruction and subjects taught in
English, associating the language with “foreigners,” “the
West,” and “the enemy.” As related above, al-Shabaab has
threatened and killed teachers of English and other “Western”
subjects for politically motivated reasons.

A secondary school teacher told us he “faced problems
from al-Shabaab” because he taught English: “They said, ‘You
have to stop the children from learning English. This is a Western language,
and you have to encourage the children to do jihad, to fight’….
Finally I said, ‘I cannot do this,’ and I went to a safe place
[Kenya].”[242]
Another teacher told us that after al-Shabaab repeatedly threatened his life at
school for teaching English: “With a few teachers, we went to the
al-Shabaab administrative offices—the sort of district office—in
Belet Weyne to protest. But they told us that the decision had come from the
head of al-Shabaab.”[243]

Many of the students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that
al-Shabaab banned English in their schools; many of these said the group
regularly monitored their classrooms to ensure it was not taught.[244]

Forbidding English carries a greater cost to students in
Somalia than simply losing the opportunity to study the language: many schools
use an English-based curriculum, alternate books are in short supply, and
students may not understand and speak Arabic well enough to make an abrupt
switch. The secondary school teacher explained why banning English “has a
huge impact on children’s education”: “Most books we have are
written in English. We use the Kenyan curriculum because we don’t have a
Somali curriculum.”[245] Many
of the students we interviewed said that their education was now limited to Arabic,
religious studies, and, in some instances, mathematics.[246]

A teacher from al-Shabaab-controlled Kismayo said:

Mostly this generation has been taught in the Kenyan
system. Some can’t write Arabic or Somali, only English…. [W]hen
they told me to change to Arabic, I found it difficult because I don’t know
how to translate to Arabic…. When we were using English books, I lectured
from memory. Then if the students asked a question, I’d check the book
and immediately hide it.[247]

Iskinder P., 15, said al-Shabaab stopped English from being
taught at his school in 2010: “By the time I left, we only studied Arabic
and religion.... We were confused because without English everything we were
learning was stopped and we were learning only Arabic. We couldn’t cope
with the lessons.”[248]

Some students and teachers said that al-Shabaab banned
science entirely, either because it was taught in English or to prevent
discussion of the human body. “I taught science and biology and that was
forbidden,” Ummi N., a teacher, explained. “I was drawing ovaries
and the reproductive system and talking about twins and they told me to kneel
and they whipped me.”[249] A
young man from Mogadishu who studied as an older student in primary school said
that, “Al-Shabaab stopped us learning science because it was about
reproductive health. They said it was unreligious, no male or female organs.
School was useless, not to learn English or science.”[250]

Others said they were allowed to continue some aspects of
science but, according to a teacher from Mogadishu, “Nothing on the human
body…. So, no reproductive health. You had to miss those chapters and
they said it was indecent.”[251]

In the place of banned subjects, al-Shabaab, in some schools
in areas under their control, introduced their version of religious teaching,
with an emphasis on jihad and even weapons training, sometimes bringing in
their own instructors. Two students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that
al-Shabaab fighters gave them weapons training at school. Baashi M., who was an
over-age student in class five, said that al-Shabaab regularly required
children ages 12 to over 20 to attend such classes at school:

They asked teachers to go to the staff room and not to
interfere. We were given a strip of black cloth to tie around our heads and
then shown the videos. They also brought weapons and explosives. They would
come with weapons and powder and give demonstrations on how to make explosives
and how many people they could kill. They were Arabs and Pakistanis and Iraqis
and Kenyans. They spoke some Arabic and some Swahili, and there was a Somali
interpreter.[252]

Various other students and teachers described al-Shabaab
coming into their classrooms and preaching about jihad as described above.

Al-Shabaab has placed harsh, religion-based restrictions on
schoolgirls. Where they have not ordered them to stay home altogether,
al-Shabaab has determined their dress, in some cases even beating girls for
wearing the school uniform, and urged them to marry fighters. Although girls
and boys already typically sat separately in the classroom, al-Shabaab has also
forced some schools to establish separate classes for girls, further stressing
already overstretched schools.[253]

Some students and teachers told Human Rights Watch that
al-Shabaab told the girls in their schools not to attend school at all. Farxiyo
A. said that in 2010, masked, armed al-Shabaab fighters came to her school in
Mogadishu three days in a row: “[They] said that what we were learning
was not based on religion and that girls should not be learning with boys….
They warned us that the girls should not be seen in the school again and wrote
down our names.”[254]
Abrihet N., 15, said that groups of around 30 al-Shabaab members came regularly
to her primary school in Mogadishu: “They would round up the girls in the
school—from ages 14 to 20—and tell us that we should not be in
school.” She said that in January 2011, “They spoke to the girls in
the school and told us, ‘You are now big girls so you are not supposed to
be in school anymore. We will marry you off.’”[255]

Many students and teachers said that al-Shabaab ordered girl
students to wear thick, uncomfortable clothing and beat them when they did not.
A 17-year-old former student from Lower Juba said he saw al-Shabaab beat his
classmates: “Al-Shabaab came to school and beat the ones who wore the
school uniform. They beat them with sticks.”[256]
Two teachers and other students, including a 13-year-old girl, also said that
al-Shabaab forced girls to wear thick, heavy clothes.[257]
Al-Shabaab “assembled all the girls in front of everyone and female
teachers as well,” said one teacher. “They were searching with a stick
to see if they had bras. If they found a bra, they would cut it with a pair of
scissors and humiliate the women and girls.”[258]
A few boys also said that boys were threatened or whipped for having long hair
or wearing long pants.[259]

Impact of Attacks on Students and Teachers

Many students dropped out [because of al-Shabaab
recruitment]. Others dropped out because the subjects were cut. At the time I
left there were no girls attending the school…. Al-Shabaab were coming to
school and taking the boys.... My grandmother said, “You should not go to
school.” Because many children in my neighborhood were taken and she was
afraid.... I stopped school six months before I came here.

—Erasto M. (not his real name), 14-year-old boy who
said his hope for the future was “not to go back to Somalia,” June
2, 2011

The various forms of attacks targeting students, teachers,
and schools in Somalia have severely damaged children’s ability to get an
education. Although it is not possible to isolate the effect of targeted attacks
from the general violence and conflict that deeply impairs education in
Somalia, students and teachers often point to targeted attacks as the primary
reason they left school, with girls and women often leaving more quickly but
all deeply affected. Schools themselves have been displaced or closed. For
students who struggle to continue, the quality of their education is severely
eroded. The lingering effects of traumatic experiences can continue to hurt
children’s ability to get an education even when they reach relative
safety outside Somalia, when they associate schools with violence or simply
fear leaving their homes.

Teachers, parents, and students all told Human Rights Watch
that teachers fled following recruitment, threats, and targeted killings. For
example, a young man who attended primary school in Mogadishu until September
2010 said that most of his teachers left after al-Shabaab threatened them,
recruited students at the school, and launched a military attack from school
grounds: “We only had Arabic and Somali and Islamic religion at the end.
The teachers for English and science left.”[260]
Baashi M. said that at his school in Baidoa, “Around January or February
2010, all the teachers ran away. We were left with one teacher who could just
give one lesson.”[261]

Students and teachers described dramatic drops in
attendance. For example:

A primary school in Mogadishu dropped from 800 students in
December 2009 to 200 students in February 2010, following the presence of
al-Shabaab at the school.[262]

Another school in Mogadishu dropped from around 550
students in early 2010 to around 20 to 30 students in November 2010, when
the school closed after being hit by AMISOM/TFG return fire.[263]

A school in Jamaame, Lower Juba, dropped from 100 to 200
students per grade to 25 to 35 students per grade, following
al-Shabaab’s forced recruitment of boys and interference with the
curriculum.[264]

Children who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that girls
typically dropped out more quickly than boys when al-Shabaab became active in
schools, even when girls were not specifically targeted for recruitment, rape,
or forced marriage. Hakim A., from Jamaame, Lower Juba, said that he dropped
out around Ramadan 2010 when al-Shabaab tried to recruit him, but his sister
dropped out at least a year earlier, “immediately after al-Shabaab
started coming to school in 2009. My mother said she should stop. When I left
Somalia there were no girls left in my school.”[265]
Older girls dropped out of their schools all at once following abductions and
recruitment.[266] Atirsa
T. said that she and all the other girls in her class dropped out around
Ramadan 2010 when al-Shabaab took some 20 of her 60 classmates—girls and
boys.[267] Other
children and parents described similar scenarios of girls dropping out.[268]

Many of the students and teachers we interviewed said that
they were still deeply affected by their experiences in Somalia, including
attacks on schools. Labaan M., 12, who lost classmates when his school was
bombed and whose father was killed for teaching English, told Human Rights
Watch: “I felt so afraid from the situation. Even now I’m being
haunted by what happened.... My father was killed by al-Shabaab. My mother
refused to come to Kenya.... I miss my mother and I’m thinking of my
colleagues who were killed in the school. Life is so horrible.”[269]

Some Somali refugee children in Kenya told Human Rights
Watch that they were still afraid to go to school because they associated
schools with attacks. Others remained in hiding, afraid that al-Shabaab might
recruit them even in Kenya if they ventured out to school. Girmer S., 18, who
saw his teacher beheaded by al-Shabaab in his Mogadishu school compound in 2008
for challenging the group’s attempt to recruit students, told us:

I never went back to school again after
this as I was afraid of school.... I am not going to school in Kenya either as
I fear school. The main reason why my parents encouraged me to come here was
that they hoped it would help me forget what I had seen. I am living with a
relative here; she is encouraging me to go to school but I don’t want to.
I don’t have the heart to go to school. I cannot explain my fear, but I
just keep remembering the teacher whom I loved so much.[270]

Sixteen-year-old Khorfa S., who said his school in Suuqa
Xoola, Mogadishu, was shelled and that al-Shabaab shot and killed several
students while trying to recruit them, said: “I do not feel safe here in
Dadaab [refugee camp in Kenya], and I am scared to go to school. I fear schools
because of what happened in my school.”[271]

Recruitment, killings, and the flight of teachers and
students have contributed to schools shutting down altogether. A young man
whose 13- and 14-year-old brothers were taken by al-Shabaab in July 2010 from
the school where they all studied told Human Rights Watch: “The secondary
school closed because teachers were killed and many children kidnapped. Most
parents sent their children to Kenya.”[272]
According to a 15-year-old boy who attended a private school in El Ashabiya
before fleeing to Kenya in early 2011: “As the number of children being
recruited increased, school enrolment was greatly affected, and so the school
was closed.”[273] And
the mother of three school-age girls told us: “In Medina [Mogadishu]
… before 2009 there were 50 duqsis but now all of them have closed
and all of the teachers have run away.... We were afraid al-Shabaab would take
our children so we stopped sending them.”[274]
According to the UN secretary-general’s report, 52 schools were closed in
Mogadishu as of March 2010.[275]

When children manage to stay in school, fewer teachers,
fewer subjects, and psychological stress damage the quality of education they
receive; this, in turn, can cause students and their parents to calculate that
the security risk is not worth the benefit of attending. For example, Baashi M.
said by the time his school closed in April 2010, fewer than 40 students were
attending, “and even those didn’t come every day,” so the
teachers combined all the students, regardless of level, into a single class.[276]

This obviously has an impact on students’ achievement.
Amadayo D. explained why he had only reached class four by age 16:

I kept failing the exam so I repeated several classes. The
main factor was the teacher. For the whole term there was only one teacher.
Most teachers ran away so we couldn’t complete the syllabus in full but
we were tested on all. Even teachers are human beings and they had to leave to
come to Kenya. Considering the situation, you don’t have a guarantee that
the teacher will be there.[277]

V. Role of International Actors

Key international actors, including the UN, the US, the EU, and,
more recently, Turkey and members of the Organization of Islamic Countries
(OIC), have continued their support for the Transition Federal Government
despite significant internal political wrangling since late 2010. Priority transitional tasks for the government have not been
achieved, which affects the overall human rights situation.

There are many challenges to ensuring that parties to the
Somali conflict act in accordance with international law, not least the fact
al-Shabaab is an armed movement that largely rejects foreign influence and
criticism of its human rights abuses. But even where key international actors
have leverage, such as with the TFG, its
partners and funders have largely failed to put sufficient pressure on the TFG
to improve its human rights record. Where discussions
of potential consequences of failing to achieve basic political and
transitional tasks have been initiated among the TFG’s international partners,
these have not sufficiently addressed human rights issues.

The “Roadmap” adopted under the auspices of the UN
Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) in September 2011 is seen by the
TFG’s international partners as the main instrument for holding the TFG
to account during the final year of the transition period. However, it contains
limited reference to human rights issues. The Roadmap refers to ending the recruitment
of children but fails to include clear and concrete benchmarks to monitor
compliance, vaguely refers to compliance with international human rights and
humanitarian law, again with no clear benchmarks, and does not examine wider
abuses and related issues.

On violations of children’s rights more specifically,
UNICEF, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for children and
armed conflict, and more recently the UN Security Council, as well as the US, have
called on the TFG to end the use and recruitment of children through the
implementation of an action plan. However, these calls and the failure to
comply have not been accompanied by concrete consequences for the TFG, for
example, by the imposition of targeted sanctions or withholding of military
assistance. And calls for accountability for serious violations of
international humanitarian and human rights law, including grave abuses of
child’s rights, have been perfunctory.

In July 2011 the UN Security Council passed a resolution
that expanded the criteria for sanctionable offenses in Somalia to include
grave violations against children, including the recruitment or use of child
soldiers, killing and maiming, sexual and gender-based violence, attacks on
schools, and abduction. The Security Council affirmed that targeted sanctions,
including travel bans and asset freezes, can be applied to both individuals and
entities for such violations.[278] While
it also extended the mandate of the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea
to include monitoring and reporting on grave violations of children’s
rights, including the recruitment of children and attacks on schools, the
Security Council did not increase staff or resources of the monitoring group,
raising doubts as to the effectiveness of the measure. Furthermore, while
channels for reporting on grave violations of
children’s rights in Somalia by all warring parties exist, monitoring
mechanisms lack capacity. The Human Rights Unit within UNPOS, for example, has
to date failed to appoint a full-time child rights expert.

The policies of key donors, including the EU and the US,
have continued to focus on institutional capacity-building and TFG governance.
Key sectors including protection and education have often been sidelined. For
example, funds required under the 2011 Consolidated Appeals Process for Somalia
for both the education and protection sectors were insufficient: only 62
percent of requested funds for the former and only 18 percent for the latter
were met.[279]

The US Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 prohibits
certain categories of military assistance to governments involved in recruiting
or using child soldiers. In June 2011 the US State Department identified
Somalia as one of six governments implicated in such use. Although State
Department-requested assistance for Somalia in fiscal year 2012 included $51
million in peacekeeping assistance for militaries participating in AMISOM, this
assistance was not one of the categories prohibited under the Child Soldiers
Prevention Act. Pending legislation would amend the law to explicitly prohibit
peacekeeping assistance to governments using child soldiers.

The UN and donors should be more robust in their engagement
with the TFG and in particular ensure that key human rights benchmarks are
achieved in the final year of the transition period. The drafting, adoption,
and implementation of an action plan to end child recruitment that includes the
establishment of stringent, systematic age screening should be among these
benchmarks.

VI. International Legal Standards

International humanitarian law (the “laws of
war”) imposes upon all parties to an armed conflict the legal obligations
to reduce unnecessary suffering and to protect civilians and other
non-combatants. It is applicable to all situations of armed conflict, without
regard to whether those fighting are regular armies, such as the TFG and AU troops in Somalia, or non-state armed
groups, including al-Shabaab, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, and other irregular
militias.

Individuals who commit serious violations of international
humanitarian law with criminal intent can be prosecuted in domestic or international
courts for war crimes. States have an obligation
to investigate alleged war crimes committed by their nationals, including
members of the armed forces, and prosecute those responsible.[280]
While AMISOM’s mandate asserts that it is not a party to the conflict,
such a determination and resulting legal obligations are derived instead from
an objective assessment of its participation in military operations.[281]Non-state armed groups also have a legal
obligation to respect the laws of war, and thus a responsibility to ensure that
its commanders and combatants abide by its requirements.[282]

A fundamental principle of the laws of war is that parties
to the conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and military
objectives. Attacks may only be directed at military objectives.[283]
Civilians are only military objectives when and for such time as they are
directly participating in hostilities. Where there is doubt as to whether a
person is a civilian or a combatant, that person must be considered a civilian.[284]

Civilian objects, including schools, are not subject to
attack unless they are being used for military purposes.[285]
Attacks on valid military targets must be neither indiscriminate nor
disproportionate. An indiscriminate attack is one in which the attack is not
directed at a specific military objective or the methods or means used cannot
differentiate between combatants and civilians. A disproportionate attack is
one in which the expected loss of civilian life and property is excessive
compared to the anticipated military gain of the attack.[286]

A school is normally protected from deliberate attack,
unless, for instance, armed forces are occupying it as a base from which to
deploy for military operations. When military forces use a school, it becomes a
legitimate target. Thus a school that serves as a military base or an
ammunition depot becomes subject to attack. A party to the conflict must
endeavor to remove civilians under their control from the vicinity of military
objectives. It would be unlawful to use a school simultaneously as an armed stronghold
and an education center, since it places children, teachers, education
personnel, and other civilians at unnecessary risk. In such instances, military
forces occupying a school have an obligation to take all feasible precautions
to protect civilians from attack and to remove them from the vicinity.[287]

International humanitarian law also provides that children
are entitled to special respect and attention.[288]
This is reflected in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires
states to “take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of
children who are affected by an armed conflict.”[289]

Child Recruitment

International
humanitarian law prohibits any recruitment of children under the age of 15 or
their participation in hostilities by national armed forces and non-state armed
groups.[290] Such recruitment or use is also considered a war
crime.[291]

During its Universal Periodic Review session at the UN Human
Rights Council in 2011, the Transitional Federal Government committed to
ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the
Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (CRC Optional Protocol).
Somalia has signed both treaties, but has yet to ratify them.[292] The CRC defines
a child as a person under the age of 18. The
CRC Optional Protocol prohibits any forced recruitment or conscription of
children under 18 by government forces, and the participation of children under
18 in active hostilities by any party. It also places obligations upon
non-state armed groups, which include insurgent and militia groups. Article 4
of the CRC Optional Protocol states that "armed groups that are distinct
from the armed forces of a state should not, under any circumstances, recruit
or use in hostilities persons under the age of eighteen."[293]

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child,
which Somalia signed in 1991 but has not ratified, also provides that states
parties “shall take all necessary measures to ensure that no child shall
take a direct part in hostilities and refrain in particular, from recruiting
any child.”[294]
The Charter defines children as all persons under the age of 18.

The Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with
Armed Forces or Armed Groups (the “Paris Principles”), a set of
international guidelines, sets forth a wide range of principles relating to the
protection of children from recruitment or use in armed conflict, their release,
and their successful reintegration into civilian life. The principles also
address the need for long-term prevention strategies in order to definitively
end child involvement with armed groups.[295]
In particular, the Paris Principles, to ensure greater protection, broaden the definition
of child combatant to include “any person below 18 years of age who is or
who has been recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any
capacity, including but not limited to children, boys, and girls used as
fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not
only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in
hostilities.”[296]
The Paris Principles also call for a child’s right to release from armed
forces or armed groups.[297]

Beyond the international legal frameworks, Somalia also has
obligations to prevent the involvement of children in its fighting forces as
outlined in Somalia’s Transitional Federal Charter 128 of February 2004,
which contains an explicit article forbidding the use of children under 18
years of age for military service.[298]

Treatment of Captured Children

The CRC Optional Protocol calls on states to provide
appropriate assistance for the physical and psychological recovery and social
reintegration for children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict
contrary to the protocol.[299]

The Paris Principles also provide relevant guidance for
release, protection, and reintegration of children who have been associated
with armed forces or groups. Release and rehabilitation measures should be
carried out without any conditions. During release, children should be handed
over to “an appropriate, mandated, independent civilian process,”
and the majority of children should be returned to their family and community
or a family and community environment as soon as possible after their release.[300]
Any prosecution of children for criminal acts should be conducted with the
objective of rehabilitating the child and promoting the child’s
reintegration and assumption of a constructive role in society.[301]

Forced Marriage and Rape

Forced marriage includes
situations in which women and girls must marry without their consent, face
threats or violence, are abducted, or are traded through informal dispute
mechanisms, such as to settle a rape case.

While CRC does not explicitly address child
marriage, child marriage is viewed as incompatible with a number of the
articles in the convention. Under CRC, a
child has the right to express her views freely in all matters affecting her in
accordance with age and maturity, the right to be protected from all measures
of violence and abuse, including sexual abuse, and the rights to education and
health, all of which are violated by early or forced marriage.[302]

The Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which the TFG
has publicly committed to ratifying,[303] states that marriages of children have “no
legal effect” and calls for state to take all necessary action, including legislation, to specify a minimum age for
marriage.[304] The committees that monitor the implementation of the
CEDAW and CRC have both taken the position that the minimum age should be 18.[305]

The African Charter on Rights
and Welfare of the Child is more explicit—it prohibits child marriage and
calls for effective action, including legislation, to be taken to specify the
minimum age of marriage to be 18 years and make registration of all marriages
in an official registry compulsory.[306]

Human Rights Watch opposes all non-consensual—that is,
forced—marriages of women and girls and also calls on states to set the
minimum legal age of marriage at 18.

Rape

International humanitarian law and international human
rights law prohibit acts of sexual violence. International humanitarian law prohibits
both states and non-state armed groups from committing rape and other forms of
sexual violence.[307]

International human rights
law also contains protections from rape and other forms of sexual abuse through
its prohibitions on torture and other ill-treatment, slavery, forced
prostitution, and discrimination based on sex.[308] The CRC and the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child contain additional protections for children. [309]

Right to Education

As discussed above, students, teachers, and school buildings
are protected under international humanitarian law. [310]Although there is no ban in
international humanitarian law on the use of school buildings as military bases
or for other deployments, a UN treaty body, the Committee on the Rights of the
Child, and the UN Security Council have on several occasions raised concerns
about such use.

The UN Security Council has called on armed forces to
refrain from using schools for

military operations because of the impact it can have
on children’s access to education. The UN Security Council said in April
2009: “The Security Council … urges parties to armed conflict to
refrain from actions that impede children’s access to education, in
particular … the use of schools for military operations.”[311] Although presidential statements are not legally
binding, they require a consensus to be adopted, and they are thus persuasive
indicators of the views of the membership of UN’s principle body for the
maintenance of peace and security. In July 2011, in a resolution on children
and armed conflict, the council again urged “parties to armed conflict to
refrain from actions that impede children’s access to education …
services” and asked the UN Secretary General to “to continue to
monitor and report, inter alia, on the military use of schools in contravention
of international humanitarian law."[312]

Furthermore, international humanitarian law provides a
fundamental guarantee that children should continue to have access to
education. [313]

The use of school buildings for military purposes and
occupation of schools, when it affects children’s ability to receive
education, may also be violating children’s right to education guaranteed
under international human rights law.[314] The right to education is enshrined in
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the CRC.[315] The Committee on Economic, Cultural and Civil Rights in
its general comment on the right to education notes the need for education
curricula at all levels to be acceptable to the students, meaning relevant,
culturally appropriate, and of good quality.[316] When considering the appropriate application of these
essential features, the best interests of the student shall be a primary
consideration.[317] Although al-Shabaab and other non-state armed groups are
not bound by international human rights treaties, in areas where they have
effective control or authority over the population, they should not interfere
with the enjoyment of these rights.[318]

Recommendations

To the Transitional Federal Government:

Regarding the Presence of Children within TFG Forces and TFG-Aligned Militias

Hold appropriately accountable all individuals found to be
conscripting or using children under age 18 in its armed forces,
consistent with widely accepted international standards. Continue to issue
clear public statements to TFG force commanders and soldiers prohibiting
the forced recruitment and use of children under age 18. End all
recruitment and use of children under age 18 by TFG-aligned militias.

Enact legislation that makes the forced recruitment and
use of children under 18 in armed forces (and any recruitment and use by
armed groups) a criminal offense.

Develop and adopt a national action plan to end the
recruitment and use of children within the TFG forces. Include clear and
concrete steps to be achieved within a limited timeframe including:

A halt to all child recruitment;

Access to bases, camps, training facilities,
recruitment centers, and other relevant installations for ongoing monitoring
and verification of compliance;

Provision of verifiable information
regarding measures taken to ensure the accountability of perpetrators; and

Implementation of an agreed prevention
strategy to address violations.

Establish rigorous and systematic screening procedures and
standards to ensure that no children under the age of 18 are conscripted
into TFG armed forces, and that all recruits are screened according to the
same high level of standards. Do not recruit individuals where there is
reasonable doubt that they are not of the lawful recruitment age. Allow
independent monitors to take part in the recruitment process, to monitor
age during salary disbursements, and to visit TFG facilities to identify
underage recruits.

Cooperate with UNICEF and other child protection agencies
to demobilize children within TFG forces and TFG-aligned militias and
transfer them to appropriate civilian rehabilitation and reintegration
programs that include educational and vocational training as well as
counseling, in accordance with the Principles and Guidelines on Children
Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups (“Paris
Principles”) of 2007.

Make the absence of children within militia forces a
precondition for integrating these militias into the TFG forces and
police.

Regarding the Capture of Child Soldiers by the TFG or TFG-Affiliates

Ensure that standard procedures are developed to transfer
captured and “escaped” children promptly to civilian
rehabilitation and reintegration programs. Children should not be detained
solely for their association with armed forces.

Any children accused of crimes under international or
national law allegedly committed while associated with armed groups should
be treated in accordance with international juvenile justice
standards—notably that detention is used only as a measure of last
resort, that children are detained separate from adults, that they have
access to legal counsel and that the best interest of the child is the
primary consideration. Provide education and other reintegration and
rehabilitation services.

Regarding Schools and Military Operations

Cease all attacks that do not discriminate between
combatants and civilians, and take all feasible precautions in the choice
of means and methods of attack against military objectives to avoid or
minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects, including schools.

Map key civilian infrastructure, including schools, with
the assistance of relevant agencies, including the Education Cluster. Use
this map to identify and protect schools in areas of TFG military
operations.

Fully investigate all attacks damaging schools in areas
under TFG control, where feasible, in order to identify and prosecute
those responsible for war crimes.

Ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court, which, among other things, prohibits as a war crime intentionally
directing attacks against buildings dedicated to education, provided they
are not military objectives, during armed conflicts.

Other Recommendations to the TFG

Ensure that all credible allegations of violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law by TFG forces and aligned
armed groups are promptly, impartially, and transparently investigated,
and that those responsible for serious abuses, regardless of rank, are
held to account.

Reinstate the post of State Minister on Child Protection
and Human Rights within the TFG.

Ratify the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its three optional protocols, the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW), and the Protocol to the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women
in Africa (“Maputo Protocol”).

Ensure that trainings for
the TFG forces and personnel include appropriate and effective training on
international humanitarian law, including regarding the protection of
civilians and civilian objects and protection of children’s rights.

Call for the establishment
of a UN Commission of Inquiry—or a comparable,
appropriate mechanism—by the UN to document serious international
crimes committed in Somalia and recommend measures to improve
accountability.

To al-Shabaab

Immediately cease recruitment
of children under 18 years old and release all children currently in
al-Shabaab forces who are under 18, consistent with widely accepted
international standards.

Cooperate with UNICEF and other
child protection agencies to hand over children in al-Shabaab forces to
appropriate civilian demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration
programs.

Ensure that any commander found
to be recruiting children or using children for other purposes in training
camps and on the front lines is appropriately held to account.

Immediately end the abduction
of girls and women and release all girls and women abducted for forced
marriage or other purposes.

Ensure that schools are
identified and protected and that students, teachers, and school
administrators are able to safely leave school buildings during military
operations where they may be at risk.

Cease all attacks that do not discriminate between
combatants and civilians, and take all feasible precautions in the choice
of means and methods of attack against military objectives to avoid or
minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects, including schools.

Immediately cease all occupation or use of schools and
school compounds where students and teachers are present. Cease using
schools to provide military training and as weapons caches, or to engage
in military operations.

Immediately issue a public order directing all commanders
and forces to cease attacks on schools, teachers, and students, and
stating that those responsible for such attacks will be held to account.

Uphold the right to education by ceasing to improperly
interfere in the curriculum of schools or engaging in classroom activities
designed to encourage the recruitment of children into al-Shabaab forces.

Halt all measures that discriminate against women and
girls, including restrictions on their work, travel, and attire.

Appropriately hold to account all al-Shabaab members and
local administrators, regardless of rank, who commit serious violations of
international humanitarian law and human rights abuses.

To TFG-Affiliated Militias

Issue clear public statements to all commanders and forces
ordering the immediate end of all recruitment and use of children under 18
in its forces.

Cooperate with UNICEF and other child protection agencies
in order to urgently identify and demobilize children under age 18 and
transfer them to appropriate civilian rehabilitation and reintegration
programs.

Ensure that any commander found to be recruiting children
or using children for other purposes in training camps and on the front
lines is appropriately held to account.

Take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from
attacks and otherwise minimize harm to the civilian population.

Ensure that schools are identified and protected during military
operations and, to the extent that is feasible, seek to ensure that
students and teachers are able to safely leave school buildings during
military operations where they may be at risk.

Appropriately hold to account all commanders and other
personnel, regardless of rank, who commit serious violations of international
humanitarian law.

To Foreign Parties to the Conflict: AMISOM and the
African Union, Kenya, and Ethiopia

Cooperate with UNICEF and other child protection agencies
to transfer all captured children to civilian rehabilitation and
reintegration programs.

Cease all attacks that do not discriminate between
combatants and civilians or are anticipated to cause disproportionate
civilian harm, and take all feasible precautions in attacks against
military objectives to avoid or minimize harm to civilians and civilian
objects, including schools.

Map out key civilian
infrastructure, including schools, with the assistance of relevant
agencies, including the Education Cluster, in order to ensure that schools
in areas of military operations are identified and protected.

Make efforts to ensure that
students and teachers are able to safely leave school buildings during
military operations where they may be at risk.

Ensure that all credible allegations of human rights and
humanitarian law violations by armed forces are promptly, impartially, and
transparently investigated and that those responsible for serious abuses,
regardless of rank, are held to account. In particular, fully investigate
all attacks that damage schools in areas of AMISOM military operations,
where feasible, in order to identify and prosecute those responsible for
war crimes.

Ensure that all deployed
personnel receive adequate and appropriate training in international
humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects
and the special protections afforded to children during armed
conflict.

To All States and the Donor Community in Somalia

Call on all parties to immediately end the recruitment and
use of children as soldiers in Somalia, rape and forced marriage, and
attacks on students, teachers, and schools.

Make clear that the
development and implementation of a national action plan to end the
recruitment and use of children within TFG forces is a priority for the
remainder of the transitional period.

Provide the TFG with the
necessary support and capacity to systematically and effectively vet its
recruits by age in order to prevent the recruitment and use of children
within its forces.

Offer the necessary support
to appropriate child protection activities and demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs that
include vocational training programs, education programs, and medical and psycho-social counseling activities including for
survivors of sexual violence, both inside of Somalia, including in IDP
camps, and in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

Assist the TFG in ensuring
that the detention of children complies
with international standards—notably that detention is used only as
a measure of last resort, that children are detained separately from
adults, that they have access to legal counsel, and that rehabilitation
and reintegration and the best interests of the child are prioritized.

Call on the TFG to allow independent and unhindered
monitoring by specialized child protection services of all TFG detention
facilities, including high-security sites.

Increase support to the
education and protection sectors in Somalia by ensuring that education and
protection funding targets within the forthcoming Consolidated Appeal
Process (CAP) are met.

Ensure that trainings provided
to the TFG forces and personnel include appropriate and effective training
in international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians
and civilian objects and protection of children’s rights.

Support and fund an increase in
the capacity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR) to monitor rights violations.

Support and fund a UN Commission of Inquiry—or a comparable,
appropriate mechanism—by the UN to document serious international
crimes committed in Somalia and recommend measures to improve
accountability.

To the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights
Council

Intensify pressure on the TFG to immediately adopt and
promptly implement a time-bound UN action plan to end the recruitment and
use of children, including by establishing effective screening procedures
to ensure that children are not recruited into the TFG or included in
aligned militia that are integrated into the TFG armed forces.

Through its sanctions committee on Somalia and Eritrea,
impose targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on
individuals and entities responsible for violations against children,
including the recruitment and use of children, killing and maiming, sexual
and gender-based violence, and attacks on schools, in accordance with
Security Council Resolution 2002 (2011).

Request systematic reporting on attacks on schools,
students, and teachers and actions by parties to the conflict that impede
children’s access to education, including the military use of
schools, through the UN-led monitoring and reporting mechanism on children
and armed conflict.

Support an increase in the
capacity of the OHCHR to monitor rights violations and to appoint a
full-time child rights expert.

Support and fund a UN Commission
of Inquiry—or a comparable, appropriate mechanism—by the UN to
document serious international crimes committed in Somalia and recommend
measures to improve accountability.

Ensure that the UN
monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea receives adequate support to
fulfill its new expanded mandate, notably by allowing the recruitment of
at least two additional human rights experts on the group.

To the Somalia Country Task Team of the UN-led
Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on Children and Armed Conflict in Somalia

Increase monitoring of attacks on schools, students, and
teachers and actions by parties to the conflict that impede
children’s access to education, including the military use of
schools, and other grave violations committed against children in the
context of the conflict, as requested by the Security Council in
Resolution 1998 of July 2011. Ensure that the information gathered is fed
into relevant channels, including the Security Council working group on
children and armed conflict and program development.

Collect information regarding specific individuals and
entities responsible for violations against children that may be subject
to targeted sanctions under Security Council Resolution 2002 (2011) and
make this information available to the Sanctions Committee on Somalia and
Eritrea.

To the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) and Other Child Protection Agencies in Somalia and Kenya

Greatly expand demobilization, rehabilitation, and
reintegration programs for children formerly associated with fighting
forces and children recruited for forced marriage, including education and
vocational training programs, alternative livelihood programs, and medical
and psychosocial support both, to the extent possible, inside Somalia and
in refugee receiving countries.

Hire staff with the expertise to identify and support
children who have fled al-Shabaab and other militia groups and in Somalia
and Kenya (Dadaab and Eastleigh).

Work with donors in Kenya to secure more dedicated
resources to develop urban child protection programs that support children
formerly associated with armed groups to obtain safe housing, education,
and other skills.

Work with the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kenya to develop an outreach campaign
to improve the access of children, especially those who are unaccompanied,
to UNHCR registration and to psycho-social and education programs.

To the UN Political Office for Somalia and the UN
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Increase the number of human rights officers monitoring
and publicly reporting on human rights abuses in Somalia, both within
Somalia and in refugee camps in neighboring countries. Create a full-time
position focusing on child’s rights violations and call on donors to
ensure adequate funding.

Increase collaboration with the Monitoring Group on
Somalia and Eritrea in order to ensure that information regarding grave
violations of child’s rights is systematically gathered and that the
sanctions committee holds to account responsible parties.

Initiate a historical
documentation exercise on Somalia to map and document serious
international crimes, and recommend measures to improve accountability.

To the UN Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict

Continue to call on the TFG to fulfill its commitment to
develop a national action plan to end the recruitment and use of children
within the TFG forces, with clear and concrete steps to be achieved within
a limited timeframe.

Request that donors develop
practical responses to support children who have escaped from fighting
forces in Somalia.

Call on the UN Security
Council to significantly enhance the resources and capacity available to
the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.

To the EU, UNHCR, and UNICEF in Uganda

Ensure that any children identified at the EU-financed Bihanga
training program are offered the opportunity to seek asylum in Uganda.

To the United States Congress

Amend the Child Soldiers
Prevention Act of 2008 in order to include peacekeeping assistance under categories
of US military assistance prohibited to governments using children as
soldiers.

To UNHCR, UNICEF, and Other UN Agencies Working in
Kenya and Ethiopia

Ensure that mechanisms are in place to identify children
formerly associated with armed groups upon arrival in refugee receiving
countries. Ensure that children formerly associated with fighting forces
are engaged in appropriate education and child protection programs
alongside other vulnerable children and children from the community.

Develop more clinical mental health programs for children within
refugee camps who require more intensive support than those offered in
general community-based psycho-social programs.

Significantly increase education and vocational training
activities in refugee camps, including by constructing more schools and
employing more teachers.

Human Rights Watch would like to thank donors from the 2011 Tokyo Dinner for their support for
this project.

Human Rights Watch wishes to thank the children and other Somali
refugees who shared their experiences, making this report possible. We also
wish to thank the many other individuals who offered information and expertise.
Finally we would like to thank those who offered key support in facilitating this
research and reviewing sections of the report.

[1] From
2006 to 2008 Ethiopian troops held a military presence in south-central Somalia
in an effort to push out the ICU. The presence of Ethiopian troops was
supported by the then president of Somalia, Abdullahi Youssef.

[2] The
Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs), of which the Transitional Federal
Government is a component, were established in 2004 as part of a Kenya-brokered
agreement following failure of a first transitional government. The TFIs also
include a Transitional Federal Charter that serves, to date, as an interim
constitution and a Transitional Federal Parliament.

[3] Harakat
al Mujahadeen al-Shabaab controls much of south-central Somalia and was the
radical youth wing of the Islamic Courts Union.

[4]For a more detailed account of this recent
history see: Human Rights Watch, Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in
Mogadishu, vol. 19, no. 12(A), August 2007, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/08/12/shell-shocked-0; Human Rights Watch, “So Much to
Fear”: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia,December 2008, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/12/08/so-much-fear-0; Human Rights
Watch, Harsh War, Harsh Peace:
Abuses by Al-Shabaab, The Transitional Federal Government and AMISOM in Somalia,April 2010, http://www.hrw.org/node/89646.

[5]For a discussion of the Djibouti peace process, see Human Rights Watch,
“So Much to Fear,” pp. 20-21.

[6]
For a more detailed assessment of the human rights and international
humanitarian law impact of these offensives, see Human Rights Watch, “You
Don’t Know Who to Blame”: War Crimes in Somalia, August 2011, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/08/14/you-don-t-know-who-blame.

[11] On
January 5, 2012, the Peace and Security Council of the African Union called for
the number of UN-sponsored AMISOM forces to be increased from 12,000 to 17,731,
and to include a Djiboutian contingent, the re-hatted Kenyan troops, as well as
an AMISOM police component. See, Peace and Security Council, “Communique
of the 306th PSC meeting on the Situation in Somalia,”
PSC/PR/COMM.(CCCVI), January 6, 2012, http://amisom-au.org/2012/01/commuique-of-the-306th-psc-meeting-on-the-situation-in-somalia/
(accessed January 31, 2012). The UN Security Council had not responded to this
request at the time of writing.

[21]
“Malnutrition brings children to the brink of death,” ICRC news
release, July 13, 2011, http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/news-release/2011/somalia-news-2011-07-13.htm
(accessed July 20, 2011).

[22] According to the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit
(FSNAU), as of August 2011, 450,000 children in Somalia were malnourished, 190,000
of who suffered from severe acute malnutrition (see OCHA,
“Horn of Africa Drought Crisis, Situation Report No. 7,” July 29,
2011, http://reliefweb.int/node/438038 (accessed September 18, 2011). Some
figures suggest the number to be much higher. According to
UNICEF, as of July 29, 2011, an estimated 1.25 million children
throughout southern Somalia were in need of life-saving interventions and
640,000 children were acutely malnourished. See “Famine
spreads into Bay region; 750,000 people face imminent starvation,” Food
Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) press release, September 5, 2011,
http://www.fsnau.org/downloads/FSNAU_FEWSNET_050911_press_release.pdf,
(accessed September 11, 2011).

[25] The
Transitional Federal Charter of Somalia that serves as the basis for a future
constitution in Somalia recognizes education as a basic right for all Somali
citizens and states that all citizens shall have a right to free primary and
secondary education. Transitional Federal Charter of the Republic of Somalia,
2004, http://www.so.undp.org/docs/Transitional%20Federal%20charter-feb%202004-English.pdf
(accessed September 20, 2011), arts. 24(1) and 24(2).

[26] UNICEF, “Somalia,
Statistics,”
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/somalia_statistics.html#77 (accessed
October 19, 2011). Statistics on education in south-central Somalia are rare
and unreliable as a result both of the lack of a functioning state and the
limited presence of humanitarian actors on the ground able to ensure systematic
reporting.

[27] UNICEF,
“State of the World’s Children, Adolescence. An age of
opportunity,” February 2011,
http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2011_Main_Report_EN_02242011.pdf
(accessed August 2, 2011), p. 106.

[28]
Ibid., p. 106 (figures from the most recent year available from 2005 to 2009).

[31]
The Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) is an advocacy tool for humanitarian
financing, in which projects managed by the United Nations, NGOs, and other
stakeholders coordinate to approach the donor community in funding program
activities in multiple sectors. Financial Tracking Service, Consolidated
Appeal: Somalia 2011, November 6, 2011, http://fts.unocha.org/reports/daily/ocha_R32sum_A927___6_November_2011_(02_05).pdf
(accessed November 6, 2011).

[33] International
humanitarian law prohibits any recruitment of children under the age of 15 or
their participation in hostilities by national armed forces and non-state armed
groups. See International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Customary
International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2005), rule 136, citing Protocol Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions
relating the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts
(Protocol II), art. 4(3). The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (CRC) on children in armed conflict, to which Somalia is a
signatory but not a party, prohibits any recruitment by non-state armed groups
of children under the age of 18; any forced recruitment or conscription of
children under 18 by government forces; and the participation of children under
18 in active hostilities by any party. Optional Protocol to the Convention on
the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts (CRC
Optional Protocol), G.A. Res. 54/263, Annex I, 54 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49) at
7, U.N. Doc. A/54/49, Vol. III (2000), entered into force February 12, 2002,
arts. 1-4.

[35]
See for example, UN General Assembly and Security Council, “Report of
the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict,”
A/65/820–S/2011/250, April 23, 2011, http://www.un.org/children/conflict/_documents/S2011250.pdf
(accessed September 22, 2011).

[40] Roundtable on “Enhancing Respect
for International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in the Implementation of the African
Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) Mandate,” Kigali, Rwanda, July 6-8,
2011, attended by a Human Rights Watch researcher. For a general overview of
al-Shabaab controlled areas during mid-2010, see Katherine Zimmerman,
“Mogadishu Map: Al-Shabaab’s Ramadan offensive,” Critical
Threats, September 23, 2010,
http://www.criticalthreats.org/sites/default/files/Mogadishu_20110309.pdf
(accessed September 22, 2011).

[41]
For full discussion on the fighting in Mogadishu in 2010, see Human Rights
Watch, “You Don’t Know Who to Blame.”

[43] In her
landmark report, “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children,” the UN
secretary-general’s former expert on armed conflict and children,
Graça Machel, wrote: “In addition to being forcibly recruited,
youth also present themselves for service. It is misleading, however, to
consider this voluntary. While young people may appear to choose military
service, the choice is not exercised freely. They may be driven by any of
several forces, including cultural, social, economic or political
pressures.” Report of the Expert of the Secretary-General submitted
pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 48/157, A/ 51/306, August 26, 1996,
http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/A.51.306.En?Opendocument
(accessed January 31, 2012), para. 38.

[48]
Human Rights Watch interview with Iskinder P. (not his real name), 15-year-old
boy, Kenya, June 2, 2011. When Iskinder, whose older brother died
fighting for al-Shabaab, told his mother he had decided to join, she
immediately took him and fled to Kenya in February 2011.

[56] The use of training camps
by al-Shabaab has been widely documented. See, for example, Chris Harnisch,
“The Terror Threat From Somalia: The Internationalization of al
Shabaab,” Critical Threats, February 12, 2010,
http://www.criticalthreats.org/somalia/terror-threat-somalia-internationalization-al-shabaab-feb-12-2010
(accessed September 18, 2011). Al-Shabaab has also posted a variety of videos
of alleged training camps on You Tube, such as
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E57E1S7nGpo(accessed September 18, 2011).

[76] International
humanitarian law prohibits the deliberate use of civilians or other protected
persons to render military forces immune from attack. ICRC, Customary
International Humanitarian Law, rule 97, citing Third Geneva Convention,
art. 23; Protocol I, art. 51(7); see also Protocol II, art. 13(1). It would be
a war crime to use children in this manner only if they were not directly
participating in hostilities, such as by actively carrying weapons.

[79]In addition to prohibitions on the participation of
children in hostilities, the use of children in support roles such as porters
or runners contravenes international standards. The Paris Principles and
Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, endorsed
by 76 UN member states, broaden the traditional definition of child combatant
to ensure protection includes “any person below 18 years of age who is,
or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any
capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as
fighters, cooks, porters, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not only refer
to a child who is taking, or has taken, a direct part in hostilities.”
The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with
Armed Forces or Armed Groups (“The Paris Principles”), January 30,
2007, http://www.unicef.org/protection/files/ParisPrinciples310107English.pdf
(accessed September 10, 2011), para. 2.1.

[104] Recent
media reports following a spate of attacks in Dadaab since October 2011 also
make reference to al-Shabaab in the Dadaab camps in Kenya, see
for example, “Kenya-Somalia: Refugee Leaders Flee after Killings,
Threats,” IRIN, January 9, 2012, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=94596
(accessed January 26, 2012).

[106]
Transitional Federal Charter of the Republic of Somalia, 2004, http://www.so.undp.org/docs/Transitional%20Federal%20charter-feb%202004-English.pdf
(accessed October 31, 2011), ch. IV, art. 26 (d), (“Forced labour or
military service for children under 18 years shall not be permitted”).

[107]
UN Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General on Children and
Armed Conflict,” annex I.

[123] “New
Somali Prime Minister pledges to work towards ‘action plan’ to end
recruitment and use of child soldiers,” Office of the UN Special
Representative of the Secretary General on children and armed conflict press
release, OSRSG/201110-18, November 3,
2010,http://www.un.org/children/conflict/english/pr/2010-11-03247.html
(accessed August 26, 2011).

[125]“New
Somali Government commits to ending child recruitment,” UN Office of the
Special Representative for the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict
press release, November 23, 2011, http://www.un.org/children/conflict/english/pr/2011-11-23277.html(accessed December 6, 2011).

[133]
Human Rights Watch interview with diplomatic staff, Nairobi, June 29, 2011, and
June 30, 2011. In April 2011 the EU identified 46 children among the TFG
soldiers that had been sent to Bihanga as part of cohort 4; the children were
sent back to Mogadishu. They were held at the Jazeera camp, an AMISOM training
camp. As of November 2011, some of the children had joined a vocational
training program while others have reportedly returned home. Human Rights Watch
interview with UN staff, Nairobi, August 18, 2011; Human Rights Watch email
correspondence with Somali NGO, August 21, 2011. Over the summer, an additional
group of children were identified at Bihanga from among the same cohort and
sent to Jazeera camp. Human Rights Watch interview with UN
staff, Nairobi, August 18, 2011; Human Rights Watch
telephone interview with diplomatic staff, August 26, 2011.

[136]
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with diplomatic staff,
November 3, 2011. Only one cohort, known as cohort four, of nine hundred
individuals, completed its training in 2011; in November 2011 a new cohort was
sent out to Bihanga.

[147]
This group of children is sometimes termed “defectors.” Human
Rights Watch has avoided this term because it implies a certain level of choice
in the initial recruitment, which does not appropriately apply to children
associated with armed forces.

[164] The
recruitment of girls and young women for forced marriage to al-Shabaab fighters
has been reported by others, including by the UN secretary-general in his April
2011 report on children and armed conflict in Somalia. UN General Assembly and
Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General on children in armed
conflict in Somalia,” para. 130.

[167] Human
Rights Watch recognizes however that in exceptional cases children ages 16 and
17 may be permitted to enter into marriage. To the extent that national systems
provide for such an exception, the law should require prior authorization by an
independent officer established by law, if and only if, upon application by the
couple wishing to marry, she or he reaches a determination that both intended
spouses have given informed, full, and free consent to the marriage and that
the marriage would be in the best interests of the child or children.

[168] See
ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law, citing article 3 common
to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and Protocol II, art, 4(2)(e)
(explicitly prohibiting rape and "any form of indecent assault").
International human rights law prohibits rape as a form of torture and other
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted December 16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21
U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171,
entered into force March 23, 1976, art. 7; Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against
Torture), adopted December 10, 1984, G.A. res. 39/46, annex, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp.
(No. 51) at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984), entered into force June 26, 1987.
The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has
stated that: “Women are particularly vulnerable in times of internal or
international armed conflicts. States parties should inform the Committee of
all measures taken during these situations to protect women from rape,
abduction and other forms of gender-based violence.” UN Human Rights
Committee, General Comment No. 28, Equality of rights between men and women,
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.10 (2000), para. 8.

[170] See,
for example, UN General Assembly and Security Council, “Report of the
Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict,” para.
130; Geffrey Gettleman, “For Somali Women, Pain of Being a Spoil of
War,” New York Times, December 27, 2011.

[191]ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law,
rules 7 and 9, citing various treaties and other evidence of state practice.
See also Human Rights Watch, Schools and Armed Conflict: A Global Survey of
Domestic Laws and State Practice Protecting Schools from Attack and Military
Use, July 2011, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/07/20/schools-and-armed-conflict.

[193]Ibid., chapters 1 and 2, citing, for
example, Protocol II, art. 13. See also Protocol I, art. 52(3) on the general
protection of civilian objects (“In case of doubt whether an object which
is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house
or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution
to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.”).

[197]
The UN secretary-general also found that from May 31, 2008, to March 31, 2010,
there were “many instances of parties to the conflict directly targeting
schools, in some cases in retaliation for attacks against them by opposing
forces, resulting in the killing or wounding of teachers and students.”
“Report of the Secretary-General on children in armed conflict in
Somalia,” para. 46.

[203] Human Rights Watch interview with Dalil O. (not his real
name), 14-year-old boy, Kenya, June 2, 2011. The boy said he continued to
attend until a rocket hit the school grounds while class was in session in
September 2010.

[204] Human
Rights Watch interview with Qamar R., May 31, 2011. In late November
2009, she said, a “mortar round fell on a class. All but two students
survived, the rest were salvaged from the rubble. It was one of the two
students who died who lost half of his head.”

[210] Human
Rights Watch interviews with Farah T. (not his real name), 14-year-old boy,
Kenya, June 6, 2011; Aseefa D. (not his real name),
24-year-old former student, Kenya, June 4, 2011 (stating that 12 students
were wounded from return fire in February 2009); Salal M. (not his real name),
male teacher, Kenya, June 6, 2011 (stating that six students were wounded from
return fire in August 2010); Odawa J., June 6, 2011 (stating that two children
ages eight and nine were killed by return fire at his school).

[211] “Report
of the Secretary-General on children in armed conflict in Somalia,” para.
45.

[212] Human
Rights Watch interviews with Labaan M., June 1, 2011 (stating that a large part
of his school was destroyed and many of his classmates, include two of his best
friends, killed when his school was hit in 2010); Mohammed J. (not his real
name), 16-year-old boy, Kenya, June 2, 2011 (stating that he stopped going to
school after it was hit by a mortar round and students were killed in 2010); Ibitsaam
L. (not her real name), 17-year-old girl, Kenya, June 1, 2011 (stating
that stray bullets killed some of her friends while they were all in school); Faaid
J. (not his real name), male secondary school teacher, Kenya, May 31, 2011 (stating
that a six- or seven-year-old girl was shot in the leg through the window of
his school in 2010 and that another day a mortar round took off the
school’s roof).

[252] Human
Rights Watch interview with Baashi M., June 4, 2011. Baashi said al-Shabaab
took him from school in February 2011 and that his 12-year-old brother also
joined. Similarly, Hussein S., whom al-Shabaab took from school in 2009,
described what happened in his class:

They came and taught jihad Islam at school. It was a
one-hour class and was taught by Somali al-Shabaab once a week. They told us
about religious war, light weapons, explosives, and suicide bombs, and how to
disobey parents. They would come with weapons into the school and display them.
They keep weapons in a special room for demonstrations.
Human Rights Watch interview with Hussein S., June 2, 2011.

[266] A
teacher told us that after al-Shabaab took 12 girls ages 15 to 17 from the
school grounds: “All the girls over 15 ran away or dropped out of
school.” Human Rights Watch interview with Salax R. (not her real name), female
teacher, Kenya, May 31, 2011. A 15-year-old girl said that after
al-Shabaab twice took around 10 girls from her school, “many of the older
girls left the school because they were scared of recruitment. As a result,
most of the pupils left in the school were under the age of 13.” Human
Rights Watch interview with Abrihet N., June 1, 2010.

[275] “Report
of the Secretary-General on children in armed conflict in Somalia,” para.
45.

[276] Human
Rights Watch interview with Baashi M., June 4, 2011. Similarly, a teacher from
Hiran, who left in late 2010 after al-Shabaab threatened him for teaching
English, explained what happened at his school: “There were 40 teachers
in 2009 and today there are 20. As a result teachers have to teach subjects
that are not theirs.” Human Rights Watch interview with Khadar N., May
31, 2011.

[280] See ICRC,
Customary International Humanitarian Law, rule 158, citing the 1949 Geneva
Conventions, including Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of
the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, art. 49; Convention (II) for
the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of
Armed Forces at Sea, art. 50; Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners
of War, art. 129; Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian
Persons in Time of War, art. 146. See also the preamble to the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court (recalling “the duty of every State to
exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international
crimes”).

[281] See
Article 2 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the
“Application of the Convention” (“[T]he present Convention
shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which
may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the
state of war is not recognized by one of them” [emphasis added]); see
also ICRC, Commentary on the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Geneva:
ICRC, 1952), vol. 1, p. 32. With respect to the application of the laws of war
to UN forces, see generally the statement by the UN secretary-general, “Observance
by United Nations forces of international humanitarian law,” United Nations
Secretary-General's Bulletin, ST/SGB/1999/13, August 6, 1999, http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jq7l.htm
(accessed February 12, 2012).

[284] Ibid.,
rule 16 ("Each party to the conflict must do everything feasible to verify
that targets are military objectives"), citing Protocol I, art. 57(2)(a). See
also Protocol I, art. 52(3) on the general protection of civilian objects:
“In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to
civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a
school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it
shall be presumed not to be so used.”

[290]See
Protocol II, art. 4(3)(c). Although Somalia is a not a party to Protocol II,
this provision, art. 77(2) of Protocol I concerning international armed
conflicts, and article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, are
considered reflective of customary international humanitarian law. See ICRC, Customary
International Humanitarian Law, rule 138. The Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court lists “conscripting or enlisting children
under the age of 15 years” into “armed forces or groups” or
“using them to participate actively in hostilities” as war crimes
(arts. 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2) (e) (vii). It also prohibits children’s
active participation not only in combat but also in scouting, spying, and
direct support functions. Rome Statute. Several UN Security Council resolutions
condemn the recruitment and use of children in hostilities, including
Resolutions 1261 (1999), 1314 (2000) 1379 (2001), 1460 (2003), 1539 (2004),
1612 (2005), 1882 (2009), and 1998 (2011) on children and armed conflict. See
United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General
for Children and Armed Conflict, “Resolutions by the Security Council on
Children and Armed Conflict,” undated, http://www.un.org/children/conflict/english/resolutions.html
(accessed September 11, 2011).

[292] Government
of Somalia, National report submitted in accordance with paragraph15 (a) of the
annex to Human Rights Council resolution, A/HRC/WG.6/11/SOM/1, April 11, 2011,
para. 46; CRC, arts. 1, 12, 19, 24,
and 28.

[293] Somalia
signed the CRC on May 9, 2002, but has not ratified it. The Optional
Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of
children in armed conflict raised the standards set in the CRC by establishing
18 as the minimum age for any conscription, forced recruitment, or direct
participation in hostilities. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, adopted May 25,
2000, G.A. Resolution 54/263, Annex I, 54 U.N. GAOR Supp. (no. 49) at 7, U.N.
Doc. A/54/49, vol. III (2000), entered into force February 12, 2002. Somalia
signed the Optional Protocol in 2005.

[294] The African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child provides that states parties
“shall take all necessary measures to ensure that no child shall take a
direct part in hostilities and refrain in particular, from recruiting any
child.” African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, arts. 2
and 22(2). Somalia signed the Charter in 1991.

[305]Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General
Recommendation No. 21, Equality in Marriage and Family Relations,
(Thirteenth Session, 1994, para. 36; UN
Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 4, Adolescent Health
and Development in the Context of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, (Thirty-third session, 2003), para. 20.

[306]African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child,
art. 21(2); Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the
Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the 2nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly
of the Union, Maputo, September 13, 2000, CAB/LEG/66.6, entered into force
November 25, 2005, article 6 (b),
http://www.achpr.org/english/women/protocolwomen.pdf ( accessed January 11,
2012).

[307]
Art. 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Protocol II, art.
4(2)(e), explicitly prohibits rape and “any form of indecent
assault.”

[313]
See Optional Protocol II, art, 4(3) (a) stating that children “shall
receive an education, including religious and moral education, in keeping with
the wishes of their parents, or in the absence of parents, of those responsible
for their care.”

[318] Annyssa
Bellal et al. suggest that, “The content of the [non-state armed
group’s] obligation would be determined by the level of control of the
armed group. For example, in determining [non-state armed group’s] scope
of obligations it could be argued that, as a minimum, the armed group should
refrain from interfering directly or indirectly with the enjoyment of rights by
every individual under its control (obligation to respect). Thus, the Taliban
[in Afghanistan], depending on their level of control of territory, would be
obliged to respect the right to education of children and not discriminate
against women. The scope of obligations would be proportionate to the
[non-state armed group’s] actual level of control, thus not excluding the
obligation to ensure or secure human rights, although it might be questionable
as to whether such an entity would have any responsibility to deliver education
or enact legislation on gender equality. Annyssa Bellal, Gilles Giacca, and
Stuart Casey-Maslen, “International law and armed non-state actors in
Afghanistan,” International Review of the Red Cross, March 2011,
pp. 25-26.